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Episode 127 - Drew the Intern is Mr. Orlando
17 Plays2 years ago
This week on the premier comedy roller coaster podcast, Ben and Zach are joined by Drew the Intern from In the Loop (YouTube and Podcast) to discuss Orlando Freefall, Tron Lightcycle Run, Cedar Point stories and more.
Find In the Loop on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@IntheLoopPodcast
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Transcript
Introductions and Coaster Enthusiasm
Podcast Resurgence and RMC Seats Debate
00:00:41
Speaker
I'm Zach and I'm your resident Great America fanboy. I'm your member. I'm Ben and I'm just a guest. I'm Drew and I am not paying $2,000 to ride the Fun Spot RMC. Holy shit. Drew the intern. Back. Hello. Back on your favorite coaster sucks. It's been literally years.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah. Um, I'm, I'm surprised you guys are still podcasting. Well, like, um, pretty impressive. We've gotten requests too. No, that's pretty impressive. Look, the more hate we receive, we eat it up. Yum. Nom, nom, nom. That's our fuel. So is it really $2,000?
00:01:41
Speaker
So it was the RMC $2,000. If you want to ride on the first train and either the front row or the back row or other, uh, deluxe or premium seats, they're two grand. Wow. Or you could just wait like a couple of weeks and then. Or the next cycle. It's just the first train. Oh, are there bidders? Like, is this, is this active? I mean, are people,
00:02:11
Speaker
Um, I don't really think it's bidders. I think there are, uh, like 24 seats that are like buy it now right now. I think it's how that works. I could be wrong. It might be bidders and those are just the starting bids. I'm not sure. I honestly looked at it for like two minutes and giggled and, um, didn't, didn't really continue reading, but like, yeah, so that's something I guess the real question is what vloggers will be spending $2,000 plus.
00:02:42
Speaker
I don't know. I, I almost wonder if it'll like get filled with people pretending they did. And they actually gave those all the way for free. And like, there'll be like, yeah, first train. I
Amusement Park Experiences and Road Trips
00:02:56
Speaker
don't know. We think we raised $15,000. It's like, yeah, but that train's full. Wasn't it 2000 a seat? Yeah. Or the ride. It looks very, it looks very RMC.
00:03:13
Speaker
Yeah, but I guess it's going to a park that I have never really needed to stop at. And now it's going to, now I know it's 21 minutes out of my way off of 75 when I'm driving up. If I remember going up 75, like this instantly becomes road trips. Now we're going to be, are going to have to like stop here to like pop in and just ride the thing. Like it, it's a total like, I guess road trip game changer.
00:03:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. I mean, it also looks slightly different. It's got a, I dunno, it's got more bunny Hills. It's got white supports. That's cool. So like, if you're like, when you're like going up to Atlanta though, like, so if you're ever driving through 75, it's pretty close to the highway. So it's a solid thing to stop and check out, I guess. Didn't they have them?
00:04:07
Speaker
A miler there? Yeah, so that's still there. Okay, so you never stopped to ride the miler? Okay, so I went once. It was supposed to be open. This is before Fun Spot even bought the park. And I got there, the park operating hours where that was open, I get there and they've just closed for the day to low attendance. So I just haven't circled back yet, I guess.
00:04:32
Speaker
Poor form, sir. Poor form. That's all right. I don't, truthfully, I don't actually take 75 very often. Um, and when I do, I usually stop at Lake Winnie, which is probably like an hour and a half north of that right on the Tennessee Georgia border. And that's a pretty sweet park too. Okay. I definitely have to go there.
00:04:58
Speaker
Do you, uh, does like when you still have the, uh, those flyo plane or like the flyo plane ride? So
Podcasting Reflections and Audience Insights
00:05:07
Speaker
as far as I know, I don't think they do anymore. I think that was last time I was there. It was replaced by some other spinning flat ride, but not the plane flippy one. Okay. That's too bad. I'm sure that their old ass old mill log flume shoot the shoots ride.
00:05:26
Speaker
I can't imagine how much it costs to ensure one of those flippy plane rides. Yeah. About what? Oh, I've heard some shit about that log flume. Oh yeah. I like diseases and Giardia and Ebola. G is floating in the water.
00:05:48
Speaker
I was going to say, that's the direction I thought you were going, not Ebola. Smegma. I'll open the boats. Yeah, that's what I've heard. Stench. Oh, well, yeah. A cannonball looks all right.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's fun. I mean, it rides like one of those old classic wooden roller coasters where they're fun. There's some little moments of pops and all of that kind of stuff, but they all sort of ride the same. I guess it's pretty smooth. Um, it pretty much goes through the water park and back, which is cool because you got like water slides around it. Yeah. And they, uh, they also have the, or they used to have the wild mouse, but they sold it to, uh,
00:06:37
Speaker
What is it? The, uh, the Alabama splash adventure park. Oh boy. Yeah. So it went from one park to another. I've heard some shit about that park. I've been for like 45 minutes about all I've ever been there. Rode rampage a couple of times and left.
00:07:02
Speaker
I've heard nothing but good things about Rampage. That's for sure. Rampage is one of the best wooden roller coasters in the world at a park that no one goes to. Did you ride it in both forms, I guess before and after the major retrack?
00:07:18
Speaker
Um, I wrote it in, I guess I, I don't know. I wrote it in 2018 2018.
Secret Projects and Podcast Dynamics
00:07:27
Speaker
I wrote it. Okay. Yeah. I heard it was running well for a bit until, uh, whatever the last thing they did was, but I mean, I, it looks, yeah. I mean that in, uh, that like boss seemed to be, or like legend.
00:07:45
Speaker
I'm just glad it's still up because like eventually these, all these CCIs are going to be gone. Although the one that, uh, didn't silver comet just reopened. I can't believe it reopened. I did not see that one happening. Yeah, that's crazy.
00:08:01
Speaker
That's amazing. And, and I'm a shit individual because I said, if Indiana beach reopened, I would go. And then I never went and it's still open. And I'm like, I really need to go back because I, I love Indiana beach. It's like one of my favorite parks. I just don't live anywhere near it. And it's not easy to get to from Orlando, Florida, right? But I keep meaning to go back because it's amazing. And now I really need to go to Niagara too, because I want to ride that wooden coaster because it could go away.
00:08:31
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, Kamara might open. I don't think it's going to. I have no faith. I mean, I guess it's been three years now, but maybe it'll just take five years. I'm going to defer to my choice of words again. Kimara might open. Yeah. I don't want to get anybody's hopes up, but, you know,
00:09:00
Speaker
No, but I mean, I'll be excited when it opens, but. And I'm optimistic it is, I guess,
Coaster Debates and Operational Issues
00:09:06
Speaker
but I don't think it's going to. And I mean, fucking mind man is gone now. Boo. So is like the, the last hope here in North America. I guess we'll see. They do have new trains on site last I heard. So, um, that's at least an optimistic promise. They have the ability to run the ride now. I guess they have trains. Well, that's.
00:09:31
Speaker
Definitely a step in the right direction. That it is. That it is. All right. Well, welcome. Welcome back to your favorite coaster sucks, Drew. It's a pleasure to have you here. Yeah. We just dove straight into podcast world. Uh, did not have the normal, how's everything going? No, we went straight in to have to talk about things. I guess that's my bad, but, uh, doing well. How are you guys?
00:09:56
Speaker
Same old. I feel like nothing happened, but this, you know, it's like, you're always busy, but nothing's really happening. It's kind of where I'm at. That's a very, uh, very valid statement that I, I connect with very well. Like, you know, just years past and you're like, I haven't really accomplished much, but what I've been busy.
00:10:17
Speaker
Uh, that was, that was a little darker and a little deeper. Um, are you okay, Ben? Oh, I'm fine. I'm actually, I'm, I'm still great. Yeah. Isn't, isn't perpetual existentialism, just the human condition. Once you're like 30, I'm going to be honest, you used a couple of SAT words there that I'm not a hundred percent confident what you said. Um, so I'm going to say there's a 62% chance I agree with you.
00:10:49
Speaker
uh, just kind of like forever feeling a bit of dread. Hmm. Well, it's, it's almost like, well, when you're young, right, you're worried about what you might or might not be doing, or if you're doing the right thing. And then at a certain point, it's mainly just like maintaining whatever it is you figured out day to day. So the stress is not so much like worrying about
00:11:16
Speaker
the future. It's more just like, Oh, how do I maintain whatever this is? But it's good. I don't know. Last year's coaster count was decent. That's cool. That's what keeps it going, right? Yeah. You, uh, once you get to your, I guess, maintain level, you, uh, just kind of it, you fit coasters in when you can. Mm-hmm.
00:11:44
Speaker
I mean, from the sounds of it, that's where Ben's deriving 100% of his joy in his life. Yeah. Well, on this podcast, of course.
00:11:53
Speaker
This podcast is just an excuse for Ben and I to complain. It's your place
Upcoming Coaster Trips and Meetups
00:12:02
Speaker
to do whatever you like to complain about, and you definitely have an audience that likes listening to it. It's impressive stuff you guys got going on here. Isn't that weird as fuck? I love our audience, but I can't say I understand them.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah. So you like do it for you, right? And then it becomes a thing that you do it for them because you actually have people, but like when people first start a podcast, the original reason is because they want to, and it'll be fun. Um, or because some company is like paying you a bunch of money to do this podcast. Those are like the two reasons they start. And it's pretty cool when they work out and it worked out for everybody and, uh, your fans, they love you guys.
00:12:45
Speaker
It's it's a nice, nice thing to have a good community for sure. How's the In The Loop podcast been? You know, it's been good. It's good. Good. We have a project in the works that I don't want to talk about. So I'm not going to say anything more, but it is amazing and it's going to bring lots of content. And we're pretty excited about this. And it is perfectly in the in the loop style.
00:13:16
Speaker
So we got a secret project coming up that I'm pretty excited about. Oh, someone's going to get liver damage. Possibly or or other damage. But, you know, we'll see. Well, that sounds mysterious and exciting. That is exactly what it is. And I don't want to I don't want to share any details, but that's your first tease for something we're working on.
00:13:47
Speaker
that's that's a okay that's a that's a very mysterious tease I'm sure you're hooking a lot of people in with that so go check out the in the loop podcast with drew and legend and hide and Ranger and Kenny and I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody
00:14:06
Speaker
Oh, probably. But that's all right. There's a lot of us. We all kind of get along together. We got a YouTube channel, a podcast. Our last podcast was kind of like the reunion tour, was not expecting both Kenny and I to make it onto the In The Loop podcast. So we had four of us the last episode. So that was sweet. Cool little reunion there because normally it's group chats and whatnot and not podcasting with all or a lot of us.
00:14:34
Speaker
You know, we got to get Kenny on this show again. We had him on once and then there was an issue where my audio was like fucked. So we recorded a whole episode with him. But it was toast. Yeah, we'll have to try that again because.
00:14:55
Speaker
Nice dude. And it'd be good to actually upload an episode with him.
SeaWorld Developments and Coaster Analysis
00:15:01
Speaker
I guess you should get him on as you got me on and you just harassed him about an opinion on Twitter. You know, it was that it worked. It did work. What was the original opinion? Well, I had something to do with it.
00:15:22
Speaker
I feel like, and I have later since adjusted my opinion on this. So I guess I, we should discuss this, but it had to do with your opinion that would like the wooden RMC coasters were more hybrid coasters and you couldn't consider them wood coasters. And they were all sort of the same rather than two different distinct categories of them. I stand by that.
00:15:51
Speaker
here, however many years with two years, three years later. Yeah, I guess they're all the same to me.
00:16:01
Speaker
especially with Lightning Rod getting its retracking and the wooden style like completely gone away. I think they've all sort of now in my head years later phased into the, they're all the same style of wooden, the same style of coaster. And I guess I think they all should probably be steel coasters.
00:16:22
Speaker
Although, um, I just wrote outlaw run in December and that one is very distinct. Uh, that's still wooden. I get feels wooden and that one's actually getting better with age. That's really cool. So that one's, that's like the one I would say out of all of them, outlaw is probably the one that I would still consider would for a while. Fucking leave it to Ben to start with a contrarian opinion, then completely flip it around. Yes.
00:16:52
Speaker
And just, oh, did I say it's more of a steel coaster? Well, I'll contrary. That was your hot take, bud. Yeah. Hey, things change. But, uh, the others like Goliath that's, I mean, the thing is too, is like a lot of run uses the wooden ledgers and Goliath and lightning rod to use the steel ones. And that's a pretty big difference. And lightning rods, mostly steel now. Anyway, I really want to ride lighting rod.
00:17:22
Speaker
I'm not the plan to actually go to Dollywood. Was it, was it not open when you, uh, when you guys went for your, your adventure over there? No, it wasn't it. Um, we were in line for a bit and we tested and it tested a few times, but it was one degree under the opening temperature. So that sucks. I have a little theory.
00:17:49
Speaker
Somebody involved at the museum is a higher up at Dollywood and they knew we were coming in. No, no thought of it that way. I'm fucking with you. I was going to say, I don't think any park would ever jeopardize the guest experience for a spite for a single podcast. For a group that didn't even get a group ticket sale rate. Yeah. I wouldn't put it past them, though.
00:18:20
Speaker
No, that'd be wild though. I mean, in fact, I mean, that's a dig deep into it, but they did an organization did put out a very special, unique mini soda explaining the organization's financials in response to something that was said. So if they're going to go that petty,
00:18:47
Speaker
Not just that, the actual individual that I'm referencing replied to one of my tweets about the museum, very impassioned and very defensive, using a personal account. Well, that may be, I think you're tinfoil hat on this one a little bit. I actually just said that to fuck with you guys, although it would be funny. It would be.
00:19:14
Speaker
I want to go to the museum someday, like genuinely would like it to open and go. I just have no idea when it will open and I can go. That's just like, I just want it to open. Like how many, like here's the thing, right? When they, it's like, when you start a project, it's one thing, if you're like, Hey, this is a passion project. This is based on donations. This is nonprofit. Like this might take us some time, but
00:19:37
Speaker
when you announce it's like, Oh, we'll open it next year. Oh, we'll open it next year. Oh, well sometime later in the year, sometime after COVID, like you can only do that for so long before people are going to just be give up on it. Yeah, man. Like the RMC bar looks awesome. You've got all these like coaster trains and like it, it still might be small and it's in a weird spot, but like they got land for it and they have things and I don't, I don't know why they won't just,
00:20:05
Speaker
open it up, except for like, whenever, I guess private tours and stuff. Um, but, um, someday I want to go. I agree wholeheartedly with that. I would love to go support that place, buy a ticket, see all the stuff on display. I don't want to have to back door by being a member of some organization and registering for some separate paid event.
00:20:31
Speaker
Pass. I want to go on my time when I can. Yeah. And I don't think that's unreasonable for a place that's been soliciting donations for 20 fucking years. I think that's valid. But I will say this, if they ever do open, I'll fucking be there.
00:20:55
Speaker
I almost wonder if there's something weird zoning issue where they're not allowed to open it to the public and there had to have to like work with the city or the county or whatever to get the right status to open to the public. That's my only, that's the only thing I could see them really holding back from opening. It's valid. Um, I guess if it's in an industrial place, maybe it isn't zoned for a museum status.
00:21:24
Speaker
That's possible. Because isn't it on the right by like the Larson? Yeah, Larson donated land to them. Yeah. Although if it's a Larson factory, then it's zoned for commercial, which would probably be the same as a museum. But regardless of that, I think the more important thing is that's where some transparency or some that honest communication from them would really, really help.
00:21:53
Speaker
Cause if they were able to come forward and say, Oh, this is the issue we're having. I think people would be a lot more understanding myself included. Yeah. I, I know it's cool, but I guess we'll find out. I guess we'll see it, but, uh, Hey, you know, a couple more decades, maybe we'll get it. I'm guessing any, anytime soon. No, I guess I don't want to guess. I don't want to guess because I'll be wrong.
00:22:23
Speaker
No, no. Put a guest down right now. It's March 2023. Uh, 2025. 2025 is my guess. All right. So we'll come back in two years time and see how poorly this is aged. Well, that's pretty much how long it takes me to recycle back onto your podcast is about two years. Good point. Good point.
00:22:47
Speaker
It's not for lack of effort on our behalf though. It's just you like have a family and a job. Yeah. But I've actually seen at least Zach significantly more times than it has been since I have been on your podcast. But the first time I'm on your podcast, I had never met you at all. Right. And yeah, now we've met in person, I think at least two or three times.
00:23:13
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to say we, uh, we were, I saw you at desert land and then I also saw you in Iowa. Have I seen you another time? I saw you at IAPA or like an IAPA after event. Oh, oh yes. Yeah, that's right. So yeah, a couple of times. Yeah, a couple of times. Yeah. Always a good time.
00:23:34
Speaker
So I guess I'll uh, I'll go ahead and get a plug-in and also as a as a roundabout way of asking you We're throwing a couple meetups this year drew Now we don't have anything fancy like free RT But we throw a good ass party So we're gonna have one at Great America in June Six Flags Great America The 16th through the 18th
00:24:01
Speaker
And we're also going to be up in Northern California to hit California's Great America September 15th through the 17th.
00:24:10
Speaker
you think you'll be able to make it out for either of those? You know, um, I am starting to work on my calendar of calendar events to figure out where I'm going. I know Chicago is on like a tentative plan at some point. I don't necessarily know if it's this year or, uh, another year, but we're definitely thinking of doing the like Chicago Cubs game and doing that in great America. So like, uh, I,
00:24:37
Speaker
plausible. Um, but I really have to look at dates and calendars. Um, but I would say plausible. I really need to get to Northern California too. Fuck like that's another good trip. Well, that's cool. Meetups going to sweeten the deal on the six flags, great America one. We're adding the night before a Cubs game. Cause they are at Wrigley the Thursday night. Oh,
00:25:07
Speaker
on the, yeah, June 15th. So we'll be there that night for anyone who wants to come into town early, have some beer, go to Wrigley, catch a ball game. And then yeah, Northern California, no, obviously California's Great America is gonna be closing at some point over the next 10 years. So that's kind of the, what spurred us to throw a meetup up there in the first place.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah. It's a smart idea. It's really also, I would say, the coaster region that a lot of people have only done once, haven't been in a while, or have never done, just because it's in that weird spot. Meanwhile, Ben lives on the West Coast, so he probably, or lived out there, so you probably have done those. Have you ever been?
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah. And it was just done a work trip. So, but I've never gone, I've never done like a dedicated Northern California trip, but I work out there. So it's convenient. Hey guys, hitting up Gilroy gardens. Possibly.
00:26:13
Speaker
Looking at that place looks like, yeah, it looks interesting. We're definitely doing, you know, um, California's great America discovery kingdom and Santa Cruz. So it was Gilroy gardens. Is that like the one that's two or three hours from, what was it from like the Bay area? Yeah, it's kind of far. I think is it? I thought it was right there. Well, maybe it is. I honestly have no idea where Gilroy is.
00:26:43
Speaker
I know they only have like the one fucking Morgan mind train. It does look pretty good for a mind train though. Yeah. Um, it, and it's got a monorail that goes through like a greenhouse and like a butterfly house and stuff. And everything's oddly themed and the mascot are two adorable looking garlics. Like it's a weird place and I kind of want to check it out. Oh, it's helping.
00:27:13
Speaker
If that will only get you to the meet up, then yes, we'll add it. It's basically it's basically on the way to Santa. It's basically on the way to Santa Cruz. It's not you can do all those in a day. Interesting. I was watching a video from Park Pros today and he was saying he was up at Great America in January. He bought a platinum pass there and it still worked for admission to Gilroy Gardens. Oh, so he just like tried it for the hell of it.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah. Nice. So that, that could work out. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if like they booped it or they were just like, Oh, these work. I don't know what they are, but these work as admissions tickets. And it's like an old admissions person that never got like the updated memo.
00:28:00
Speaker
They're just like, oh, that's a plastic card. Yeah. Did you see everyone in Adventureland when we were there that had palace passes from different palaces? They didn't know how to scan them, but they were like, yep, that's a valid admission ticket. That park is like jank in the most awesome way.
00:28:23
Speaker
I love that park. It's just wholesome, fun, entertainment, a park that's getting slightly better than it should be.
00:28:39
Speaker
It's sweet. And then it has like the most ridiculously, uh, drinking bars and policies. That's great. Like they get to swim up multiple swim up bars. You can take booze in the lazy river. Uh, like it's a total day drinking park. It's awesome. I really liked the casino right next door. Oh yeah. You guys went to the casino. I, I did not. I went home. Yeah. You guys had a party at the campground.
00:29:06
Speaker
which I think involved a little more alcohol than I could safely consume. Yeah. Got a little rowdy. It's good times. So are you guys doing free RT this year? Um, we don't, we've discussed it. I don't think we've gone any further than preliminary discussions, but
00:29:33
Speaker
Honestly, a lot of park thing is tough to do this far out and it's a little easier to do when the park is actually open and has staff and can talk to people about what we want to do and all of that kind of stuff. At least we've found. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I will keep an eye out because I had a great time at the event last year. And if I'm able to attend, depending on where it's at,
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah. Um, it's always a good time. And we'll try to get Ben to fucking show up too. Yeah. It's depending on where it's at. I'll, uh, I'll try to come out. I like to do more stuff this summer, taking a few years off. Where do you live now? Are you still in Denver? Uh, yeah, I live in Denver. Um, are you, uh, mostly full time, but I've been going to California more. Well, I'll start to be going there more often. So,
00:30:32
Speaker
Are you excited for the reopening of Casa Benita? I am interested to see what it's like. I've, after going to the original one, um, they can only really go up. The old one was pretty bad. Like the thing is, is that it's very close to the episodes. If you've seen, if you like watch South Park, it's fun to go. But I mean, the thing is, is that Casa Benita was like kind of a shithole. Like, so I'm assuming what they're going to do to it is going to be all, all improved, but
00:31:03
Speaker
All the other food is bad. Like it was terrible. Like the worst food. Yeah. Yeah. I remember you describing it being like.
00:31:14
Speaker
soft tortillas on a plate with like craft singles. I mean, that's, it's yes. No, it's like non-seasoned meat. So if you get like a chicken, uh, like a, I don't know, like a chicken enchilada, like it's, it's a plain tortilla shell with unseasoned chicken and then like a slice of Velveeta or American cheese and it's microwaved and that's pretty much it. And the chips, like, you know, there's shitty tortilla chips out of the bag that are like ones that aren't salted. Um,
00:31:45
Speaker
kind of stale. Like the chips weren't even good. Their margaritas were weak as shit. Um, but they had cliff divers and the gorilla show, the gorilla show was my favorite one, but it's a weird place. I am glad I went to it, but it was,
00:32:09
Speaker
I liked it because it was so weird and it was exactly like South Park, but it is definitely a, it was a complete shithole. I also like that there's, it's, there's like a little queue line in the beginning. It's you like stand in line to get your food. Yeah. But then once you sit down, you can get all you can eat from anything off the menu. Yeah. Your entree that you ordered had different price tiers.
00:32:38
Speaker
But I mean, if it's the blandest, grossest sound, you said a slice of Velveeta, and that made me shudder, dude. It's pretty close.
00:32:50
Speaker
And everything's under heat lamps and hopped on there made in bulk. The soap opinions are good only because it has powdered sugar on it or a cinnamon. Like I think they're cinnamon. I don't know. They're sugared of some, some kind. Um, then they have little tables, table bottles of honey. It's the only good thing there.
00:33:16
Speaker
I mean, we've been talking about potentially doing a meetup in Denver next year. So I think Casa Benito would definitely be on the schedule if we do. Denver's a fun little theme park trip city, especially if you rent a car and then chuck on out to like Glenwood Caverns for the day. It's a pretty fun little trip.
00:33:40
Speaker
Yeah, and that would be the plan. I think it would be, you know, obviously Illich and Lakeside, but also like Meow Wolf and Glenwood. I'm also liking that starting this year, both of our meetups that we have planned are in legal states. Aye. That sounds a plug for you guys.
00:34:03
Speaker
It's a nice benefit. Meanwhile, I go to Iowa and I get pulled over for speeding on a road that didn't have a speed limit because I was supposed to know the speed limit of all of these cornfield roads was 45 or 55, whatever it was. Oh, yes. Meanwhile, your states are like, come here, buy my recreational pot. Leave, leave the state with it. We don't care.
00:34:30
Speaker
I'm going to be honest with you guys, especially those of you listening that are coming to our Six Flags Great America meetup that consume cannabis regularly. Illinois's product sucks. So if you are used to good shit, expect everything here to be mids. Is it really that bad? Yeah, because we only have like
00:34:59
Speaker
a handful of, uh, grows that are licensed. And most of the dispensaries sold their licenses to multi-state operators. So there's like two independent dispensaries in Chicago and a handful maybe around the whole state. So just major consolidation. They added a bunch of new licenses though. So possibly, you know, things will be getting better.
00:35:28
Speaker
It's an interesting business to get into, right? Because, like, the government doesn't let you take credit cards and have real accounts. Like, you'd basically have to do all your books in cash, which is, I guess, inconvenient. Yeah, but can also be advantageous. Yeah. It's interesting to see the evolution of this.
00:35:53
Speaker
with a recreational sort of blooming across the United States. It's also interesting. Every time I go somewhere that's not legal, I feel like cops also don't give a shit everywhere now. Like that's not true. Like do people even get possession tickets anymore? People are still getting arrested, dude, but at a much, much lower frequency.
00:36:21
Speaker
Hmm. Not really. I mean, look at Texas, right? Or Kentucky, Tennessee, fucking Florida. Florida does have a medical program. Yeah. I was going to say, I think Florida now, Florida is pretty chill. Yeah. Well, that's what I mean. I think those States have become like within the last year or two, pretty chill or at least much more chill than they've been. I mean, like Wisconsin's medical doesn't equate to chill, man.
00:36:54
Speaker
Cause the thing is like, here's the deal, right? We're three white dudes talking about this. And so we're not going to be the ones that are statistically going to be arrested regardless of what state or what the legal status is in that state. And that's exactly what the problem is. And that was a valid problem. Um, source. I'm currently in college for cannabis studies degree.
00:37:24
Speaker
Oh, that's a fun, fun degree. Absolutely. It is currently in a fascinating class called cannabis and the law, which has a heavy focus on restorative justice and social equality. And, uh, yeah. So do the textbooks you have have like a cut out? It's like cut here for rolling paper.
00:37:52
Speaker
Yeah, dude, homework is fucking smoking. It's great. It seems like you're getting an A in that class. Yeah, man. No, it's cool. I'm looking forward to it. There's once I get to the 200 level classes, I get to do horticulture and they have a hemp garden at my school. That's cool. Yeah. So I'm super fucking stoked to go learn about tending to the plants.
00:38:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's pretty sweet. Totally. But yeah, to to bring it all back around. Despite the shitty weed here in Illinois. It's fine, it's just mids, but. At least our meetups are in legal states this year, so. Yeah, do with that as you will. Do with that as you will. Yeah, what do you guys want to talk about today?
00:38:50
Speaker
Well, it looks like we got a couple news stories in. Obviously, first up, that Air Force One auction is fucking craziness. Yeah, also weird. Didn't haven't as of recording, haven't posted it on socials. As of release date, I'm guessing it'll be on socials.
00:39:12
Speaker
most likely. This is coming out Friday, but, um, uh, it came out as a pass holder email, right? So like they only send it to their pass holders, I believe, or people who are on like some sort of like promo email lists. Cause that's how I got it.
00:39:29
Speaker
And, but yet when you bid, one thing you get is you get an annual pass for the year also. And I'm like, or once you win a seat and I'm like, but I guess you sent this out to pass holders. So are non pass holders going to go, but.
00:39:45
Speaker
I got my email up here and it says Fun Spot America Atlanta is proud to announce the grand opening of its latest thrill ride Airy Force One and you could be one of its first riders thanks to the Airy Force One pilot auction benefiting the national roller coaster museum and archives.
00:40:03
Speaker
The auction allows 20 lucky bidders to be part of a roller coaster history when they experience Airy Force One together at the first park public ride on March 31st. Winners will also be special guests at the grand opening celebration at Fun Spot America Atlanta and receive an exclusive commemorative Airy Force One gifts, including complimentary 2023 Ultimate Fun Spot Season Pass.
00:40:32
Speaker
See additional important details below. Interesting. The details below are, so don't delay, click the button below to place your bids for this historic event today.
00:40:52
Speaker
Interesting. I'm browsing to see if anything has a bid yet. Um, yeah, I'm curious if any influencers actually pay the price or like, what's the over under that? Like the second public train is just vloggers. I mean that day is going to be very busy at fun spot Atlanta, but I don't imagine a lot of days are going to be busy there.
00:41:22
Speaker
Right? Like this one ride is not going to drastically shift attendance to a million people a year coming to this park. No, definitely wild. If it did, like if that now got everyone in that greater Atlanta area to be like, yeah, we're coming to fun spot. And they would all check it out and go there. This place could be, this could be beneficial for them. I guess the question in my mind is like, what's the draw?
00:41:51
Speaker
when like in my perception is to most people that are in the market are going to be like, Oh, so they just built twisted cyclone over here. Maybe. Um, but I think the answer to that, cause this is not, I mean, it's like 45 minutes to like an hour away from six flags. So you've got all the people over here that are like, Oh cool. We have a cool ride over here. That's not an hour and a half away.
00:42:17
Speaker
I guess that makes sense. But I mean, it's also just to get people like, you know, it's just like a one day park or I mean, I know six flags is, but it's, you know, it's like an afternoon and it's not a full day commitment. Yeah. It's like, uh, come in, ride some go carts, ride a couple of rides, get out of there. I mean, it's really just an FEC. Yeah. I mean, they're still pulling from the same,
00:42:46
Speaker
greater metro area as Six Flags though, you know what I mean? Yeah. So like, maybe they're not trying to position themselves as direct competition. Well, I mean, every attraction competes with each other in some form or another, but like every, every moment of entertainment, like even theme parks are competing against Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, and like things like in your face.
00:43:14
Speaker
Um, they're competing for you, like your attention span and all of that kind of stuff. So I think fun spot always plans their market of being a couple of hours. And that's why they have long hours and to, to capsulate the whole day. Like that makes sense. It's just like, I guess I'm really wondering about like, if this is really going to move the needle in a considerable way for them in terms of attendance or revenue or anything, you know,
00:43:44
Speaker
Um, well, probably revenue because it's another $10 ride. So I think you're going to get, I think, yes, I think this will push for revenue because fun spots revenue is also, um, or be up there. They're normally a paper ride place. Oh, right. Good point. Good point. So this ride will make more than an empty spot that made nothing.
00:44:11
Speaker
It's interesting. So that's potentially 200 bucks a dispatch. Yeah, right. I mean, you got what, 20, 24 seats on an RMC train. Um, old me would have known the math in my head of how many people sit on a coaster, but I'm guessing 24 people on a dispatch. It probably will only run one train besides maybe opening day because
00:44:34
Speaker
mind blower very rarely runs too. And I, I have seen white lightning have two trains in operation one time total in my life. That seems weird that they even own two trains. Well, not really because Florida, the parks are 365. So like you do your annuals and like one train's got to go down for a refurb and then you put that one back on and then you put the other one off.
00:44:59
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. It's a, it's a very Florida thing, but all of our, all of our older roller coasters all have an extra train. So that way they can rotate through annuals like Kumba opened with four month or Kumba had four trains. So that way one could always be in the rotation for annual maintenance, but now they're getting cheaper and not doing that.
00:45:28
Speaker
That makes sense. Everybody's cutting costs. Yeah. You know, um, speaking of Florida, we got a voicemail from a listener. Oh, Oh, that's right. Yeah. So I think we should play it. Have you listened to it yet? I started it, but I didn't listen to it all the way through. Okay. Let's go. I know it's about Florida and more specifically Tron.
00:45:58
Speaker
I think we fucked up some information about Tron, Ben. But also since we got Drew, the intern here, he can, he can help clear some shit up for us. All right. Yeah. Let's talk about wing. I like talking about Florida. It's where I am. I'm currently looking outside and seeing Florida looking like Florida out there. Yeah. No Gators on the ring doorbell camera yet. Um, waiting on that one day. Like I can't wait for that video.
00:46:24
Speaker
Well, you're going to have to save that one, make a meme of it. Oh yeah. Uh, the coolest thing I have so far is, um, a raccoon that had climbed on top of the camera. So you just saw his face like sticking out, like looking at it. And then, um, a raccoon or a possum walking through the, through like the driveway, but no Gator yet.
00:46:50
Speaker
Ben, Ben got one on his ring camera of his friend getting shot by a firework. That's pretty sweet. Yeah. He was like getting high on the porch and then a firework exploded and it shot like right at him. It's pretty good. Um, and the still, the still is somewhere on our discord. So go look for that.
00:47:15
Speaker
It's a quick plug for your Discord. Our Discord's great, and you should join, Drew. You know, I don't even have a Discord, so I don't know what a Discord is. It's like a chat room, kind of. So is it like we have another app that we use to group chat with people? Basically. Oh, that's cool.
00:47:39
Speaker
Yeah. It's just like, you know, the different servers there are, you know, there's a bunch of different threads. So we got the, your favorite coaster stocks one, and we got a whole variety of different threads to discuss. Oh, so it's kind of like a new version of like forums or like Reddit or something. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a blend of forums and a chat room. Oh, that's cool. So I definitely would recommend it. Uh, ours is good.
00:48:10
Speaker
Ride this one still has some activity. Coaster cozies. It's cool. This is good. Yeah. Um, so anyway, I know this voicemail is from a friend of the show in front of all of ours, Dana. Oh, how fun. Yeah. So let's, uh, let's hear what Dana has to say. Hey Zach and Ben, it's Dana. Um, I'm a few weeks late catching up on podcasts. I've been pretty busy. Um, so I'm calling about Tron. Um,
00:48:39
Speaker
Since the previews have started, I have actually written it now 17 times. And yeah, let's talk about it. For starts, I do have to correct you. The leg restraints that are on Tron are actually on every single Vekoma booster bike. And the Zamperla version also have their own version of the leg restraints. They call them a knee pin. So the toe votes to go behind your knee.
00:49:07
Speaker
The Zamperola ones are much more comfortable. That being said, let's dive in. The Tron, yeah, it's really, really looking uncomfortable. I have really big calves, because I'm a big boy. And the first preview I went to, I actually didn't fit. I had a ride in the transfer access vehicle, or what you're calling the big boy seat. And at the time, only two of the seven trains had them.
00:49:35
Speaker
As of now, three of the seven trains have one, and Disney has ordered another one from Tacoma, so a fourth one is going to be on the track. Since then I had figured out how to get myself in and what worked for me. I also wore pants. My first time I was wearing cargo shorts and they were getting bunched up, so I wasn't letting my knees all the way down make feet all the way back. So I can get myself in. I have some gnarly bruises on my calves from it.
00:50:01
Speaker
It's really not comfortable, and it kind of hurts, but I do actually enjoy the ride. The launch is really good, and the outside portion's good. And then, like, the first half of the show scene is okay. But then it kind of dies. It trims a lot, and I think it does it for the show effects. The front row is definitely the most intense, but the show is better in the back. It's really cool to watch the bikes change. It's still bizarre to me as hell that it's at Magic Kingdom,
00:50:31
Speaker
They have the 48 inch high requirement. Barely anybody fits on it. And it's deceiving. It's not like a fat person problem. It's a calf problem. Only calves. That's the only thing that fits not letting people fit. Because I wore it in a jacket. I wore it in a jacket. I'm a big guy. And I saw people twice my size have no problems because they have smaller legs. And people half my size not fit at all because of their calves or leg length. So it's pretty deceiving. No in the face.
00:50:59
Speaker
But yeah, we'll see. It's a very short ride. I don't think it's actually going to be received well by the general public, partially because of the size issue and because of how short the ride is. But yeah, Space Mountain is better. And I can say that because I've rented Toronto and immediately rented space right afterwards. All right. Interesting thoughts by Dana in here.
00:51:23
Speaker
Also, there's a very good chance that Dainan has ridden this ride more than anyone else on the planet at this point. Sounds like it. Because it's just in, so pass holders only get to go once and like they had their cast member previews where sometimes they were letting people ride once and sometimes they were letting people ride more than once, but
00:51:44
Speaker
you only as a cast member got to go once. So then to go the other times you have to like go as other people's cast member guests. So then he's probably written it more than anyone else out there. So I guess he would know. I mean, we both know Dana and we all know Dana and he has a way with magic. Shall we say it's true. Then he's, but yeah, I liked it. I had a good time. I I've, I've written it twice now. Um,
00:52:14
Speaker
I understand the expression night and day difference because Tron has a night and day difference. It is so much better after the sun has set than it is during the daytime because the whole canopy lights up, changes colors, and it's pretty cool. And the launch is fun.
00:52:34
Speaker
People always say it's really short, but like, I mean, it's the same length as rock and roller coaster, which I've never heard anyone complain that it was short. Um, I just think most of Tron is new and interesting and fun. So you're like taking it all in and then it's over. But I mean, it's a launch coaster. Most launch coasters are over quicker than a ride that takes you up several lift hills. Yeah. It looks like a good addition to the park.
00:53:03
Speaker
Well, see, when I say it, I usually use that as like a negative connotation, like, oh, it's a good addition to the park. Like it's something I don't care about. But I think Tron's pretty sweet. I would say I would like it better than Space Mountain probably, but I need to reevaluate that in probably like six months to a year. But I think it's strange, one, that it's at Magic Kingdom and two, that it opened after Guardians when Guardians is the far superior of the two attractions, right? Like,
00:53:33
Speaker
Like I know Epikat needed the boost more for attendance than Magic Kingdom, but it's just very weird that it's, I don't know, it was weird to me that Guardians of the Far Superior ride that they opened it first. Because they did the same thing with Mickey and Rise of Resistance. They opened Rise first, and then Mickey's, which was like a less intricate version of the same ride system that Rise of the Resistance was.
00:53:56
Speaker
And for all purposes, Tron and Guardians are the same ride system of a launch roller coaster, just different ride vehicles. So wasn't there an issue with Tron though? Like didn't they start construction around the same time?
00:54:11
Speaker
Yeah, they did and then Disney just got budget cheap and decided they were gonna finish Guardians instead of Tron and boarded Tron up and left it abandoned for a year and a half and then finished Guardians and then went back to Tron. But like in theory, they could have gone the other direction too, right? They could have been like, oh, let's open this one first and then we'll open Guardians. Because they had to have known that Guardians was gonna be the better ride.
00:54:36
Speaker
Well, those executives are making 35, 40,000 or 40 million a year. So can't really trust them on making good decisions.
00:54:46
Speaker
Did you have the issue with your calves? Uh, you know, I did not. Um, I sat, it, it's a weird train, right? And it also like just equally as weird as the fact that Disney doesn't touch their restraints. Like the guests lower their own lap bars and check their own restraint. Right. So you're getting into ride vehicle. That's totally different to any ride vehicle. Most of these guests have ever experienced.
00:55:10
Speaker
Um, to, to break down the weirdness for you here, each seat has its own air gate, like not each row, because if you're on the far side of the train, you walk behind your row and board from the other side. And so like little floor panels plop down. So like you can walk across the floor, walk across behind your row, your, uh, your row to get onto your bike from the other side.
00:55:35
Speaker
Um, so that's already pretty weird. And then you get in and you hop in and then you have to figure out how to close this lap bar, which is pulling forward on the handlebars. And like, you don't really know to do that. So you wait to see you sitting there and the customers like pull forward on the handlebars full. And then they're like, all right. And so then I sat down, did that. Um, and then.
00:55:58
Speaker
pushed up and I was locked in. So I don't know how close I was to it. I just, I know I fit and I didn't notice the chin or the calf restraint. Um, I actually in both rides that I've been there did not see anyone get denied either time, but it is a weird load procedure and it's a weird grouper spot. Um, and then with the ADA line coming from like a different angle, um, it's a weird like grouper merge part that
00:56:27
Speaker
they sort of struggle sometimes to fill the whole train. Interesting. How are they fucking it up like that? Or is it just that like,
00:56:38
Speaker
The mechanics of it are so bizarre. Well, I think it has to do with the like Tron seat in the back row, how there's only two of them. Well, now there's three of them, but that even makes it weirder because like they now have to look to see if it's showing up or not because there's like a pattern of like when it coming and when it's not coming. So they have to look at unload to see if the next train is the the ADA car.
00:57:05
Speaker
And then if it is, so then they group those people because you sit with your whole group. So it's like, there's six of you. So then they put you in like the last six seats and the people who need the ADA car in the very last row. And then they group the rest of the line that way, but it's just the operation of looking to see if it was there. And then grouping an ADA group who in theory is moving slower than the normal public. And then you got to really push like the public to be like, all right, you guys are going here. You're here.
00:57:31
Speaker
But they've already loaded from back to front for the ADA group, and then loading from front to back for the day guests. You sometimes have day guests that don't fit in the train that had been sent there and then so you're going to hold them. It was an interesting operation that I was watching. And then when I went in and said, hey, can I sit in the back row of a bike car?
00:57:55
Speaker
Uh, that completely stumped them and they didn't know where I should stand because they've got their line for like the people who were on the car part back row. But I bet you the car becomes the back row on all of them. So I wanted to sit in the back row with a bike before I, um, didn't have the chance to anymore. And that really confused the guy and he didn't know where to stand and he was like, hang on one second. And then eventually figured out how to put me on that seat.
00:58:21
Speaker
So there's some real growing pains then, apparently. Yeah. But I mean, this is what previews are for, right? Like you are training a massive team for this because these Disney rides are open from.
00:58:34
Speaker
7 30 in the morning on their earliest opening, sometimes to like midnight, 1 AM with parties and the ride is open the entire time. So there's probably going to be 200 different team members that work Tron in a, in a week, um, during its first year of operation. So they got to get them all trained on all of the positions. So that's pretty much what's going on now is you're, you're getting a team of like 200 ready to go. Wow. That's a,
00:59:06
Speaker
It seems complex. Hey, so I have a question for you. Yeah. Have you gone to the galactic star cruiser? I've driven past it. I haven't done it. What is the, what is the exterior look like? Is it a commons? Like I'm not even kidding. Is that part of it? Like do they, do they even try to hide it from you as you walk in or?
00:59:31
Speaker
So the front of the building has like a berm and like nice little like theming But the only way to get there is to be doing it or to be a cast member parking in the cast member parking lot Because it's basically built an auxiliary of the cast member parking lot
00:59:50
Speaker
Um, so I don't have access to the road to like get to it, but from everything you can see on Disney property, it looks just like the Cedar Point dorms, like the narrow emergency windows staircase that's on the, like the staircase on the outside of the building. Um, and then just a concrete cinder block structure that has like window slits that are like emergency exits.
01:00:14
Speaker
What do I have to go and what do I have to look up on Google maps to find this? Uh, just start. I don't think Orlando is updated enough. Um, like Hagrid's is under construction in the, in our Google maps. Yeah. It's still showing Reedy Creek little, little bit of humor for you. All right. Um, well I heard they were canceling dates.
01:00:38
Speaker
Yeah, well, it is really expensive and it's like really expensive, right? So Star Wars fans don't, I don't know. I mean, it's two different things here. It's really expensive. So your people who like the live role playing would probably really like it. Like your Dungeons and Dragons players probably would really like it and really think it's cool, but a lot of Star Wars fans, I feel like
01:01:02
Speaker
want to want to live the fantasy of the job of the hut and like batterling Darth Vader. Like they don't care about this new storyline that Disney made for themselves. Right. And so I don't know. It just, it was a, it was a weird thing. I feel like having a Disney star Wars hotel that was like all star music where you've got like the Darth Vader rooms and you've got like the R2D2 rooms, like that would make a killing.
01:01:29
Speaker
Did you see that they had like a bunch of the actors quit and they posted videos that all had like the same script? No, I did not. It was a little weird. Did they quit recently or is this recent? This was within the past month and like all of them posted like this pretty much the same video to their TikTok where like they're talking or their Insta where it's like,
01:01:58
Speaker
I quit the star cruiser because of this. I loved my role and I did this. Huh? Yeah, it was pretty interesting. That is interesting. But it was all from the perspective of so that everyone that posted it was quitting. What was the reason? What was their reasoning for quitting? I didn't really get into it. They were just, they were reading a Disney script. Oh, so it wasn't against Disney. It was just,
01:02:29
Speaker
No, it was definitely like, here's what the lawyer told me I have to say if I post anything about it online. Oh, gotcha. We're like one of those scripts that's like, don't ask any follow up questions. Yeah. It's odd. I think it's cool. I think it's price point is wrong. I think we could definitely.
01:02:51
Speaker
probably have more style of these? Like I think if you did one at Universal where it appeared you spent the night in Hogwarts and then you got themed access into the wizarding world in the morning, I think that would do really well. But I think your price point is just too high. Five grand for this two day adventure seems unnecessarily stupid expensive that
01:03:20
Speaker
it was never going to work and it clearly isn't working if we're down to it, not every day and people are quitting. Yeah. I mean, here's, here's a thought, right? It's already on Disney property. Just spitball in here. Maybe theme it to a Disney property that people really like haunted mansion.
01:03:49
Speaker
Well, I think the price point is wrong too. Like who wants to pay five grand for two nights in a hotel room, right? Like, well, like I was saying, these executives, they make 20 to 40 million a year. So they're like, Oh, five grand sounds about right. Who can't afford that? Well, a year.
01:04:09
Speaker
Counter that though, if Disney leaned into the park fan sector that they already knew existed and displays that they have the spending patterns to help support it, like, I think a haunted mansion, like, okay, if you offered a comparable experience, but it was like you were staying in the mansion and then included, instead of taking a voyage to Batuu,
01:04:37
Speaker
You got to do the equivalent of that cast member tour of the Haunted Mansion. I think lots of people would pay that price.
01:04:47
Speaker
I think in time you would get the same burnout. I think you would get not repeatability. I agree there. Maybe in Disneyland because Disneyland is essentially a locals park. Like the Disneyland lifestyle is totally different than the Disney world lifestyle. Um, like you block out pass holders and Disneyland is a ghost town. You block out pass holders at Disney world and you don't notice because I,
01:05:15
Speaker
30% of guests there have never been before in their life and will probably never go again. And then your next percentage is families that do their like every four year trip. But your annual pass holder is such a small pie in the Florida market.
01:05:33
Speaker
But I feel like there's a good chance you'd capture even a decent percentage of those once every four years crowd with something that was more specifically targeted to Disney. Yeah. Especially if like, I guess they kept rotating it. So you have like the storyline is different. Like that's your other flaw with this. This is the storyline for Batuu is the same every single time you have the same storyline. And then if you go again, you have the same storyline. Like the only,
01:06:02
Speaker
There is a, okay, I guess I lied. There is a singular difference you can do. You can be either like a good person or a bad person and you select that when you go onto the ship and your day is different between if you're a good person or a bad person. But your day is the same and you see the things. It's just your interactions are different.
01:06:21
Speaker
So the best repeatability, the best case factor with repeatability is two visits then. Yeah. Two visits and then maybe a third visit. If you feel like you didn't do a very good job of one of them. Yeesh. Yeah. I think if they announced, if it was like a 12 month or even, you know, Disney, like 18 months and it was themed after different attractions. Cause they could do it for like pirates.
01:06:52
Speaker
some of the fantasy land rides. And I think your, yeah, I think your fan base would, I think your repeatability would work if you were rotating it around or had different storylines within it. I think the idea is there. I think it's a great idea. And I actually think you probably see Universal steal this idea somehow, someway sort of, right? Like,
01:07:19
Speaker
Universal is making a lot of weird moves. Like they did their escape rooms at city walk. They're doing that horror nights thing. Um, their kids park in Texas. So like universal is making moves and I could see them doing this experience where you could stay at Hogwarts or you stay in minion land and have like a minions thing on that side. So I could see that definitely being a thing too, right? Hogwarts be awesome.
01:07:50
Speaker
A mini in a hotel. Hell yeah. Or Super Nintendo. Oh yeah, Super Nintendo. There's a lot of possibilities there. And you have these crazy detailed themes on a big plot of land that is going to be undeveloped behind the park that is just prime for expansion. So you could totally do one of these as a future expansion for Epic Universe.
01:08:14
Speaker
in theory, I assume. I don't know. I'm not like a super expert on Epic Universe. I'm excited for it, but I'm not like someone who's following airplane photos of it through the whole construction and stuff like that. Well, I could see the, um, like a Hogwarts hotel definitely being huge. That would be awesome. As a Harry Potter fan, you get the four different halls or are they called the halls houses houses? Yeah. Yeah.
01:08:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, and they would sort you and stuff. That would be cool. Yeah, I don't know if I'd want...
01:08:55
Speaker
I feel like sorting sort of needs to be optional now at this point. Like I did a Hollywood tram tour and like the Warner Brothers studios and they like sorted everybody. And I'm like, cool. This random hat is going to randomly generate what I am. Meanwhile, like you've taken like online buzzfeed quizzes and stuff. And it's like, I feel like I've been sorted a couple of times. I don't want my stay based on the, you've been Hufflepuff'd. All right, great. Do your, your room is now themed to Hufflepuff. And I'm like, Oh, that's terrible.
01:09:24
Speaker
I wish I could pick ahead of time. Yeah, actually that would kind of, I don't know if that would work so well because like I'm Ravenclaw, but my wife is Hufflepuff. Uh-huh. I don't want to stay in a Hufflepuff room, but that's inevitably what's going to happen. Yeah. So yeah, I guess I agree. But what house are you?
01:09:49
Speaker
Um, so I feel like I was originally a Slytherin, but I've now as an adult, I feel like I associate more with Hufflepuffs, but you know, okay. I guess, I guess, I guess I got sorted as 11, an 11 year old who was into this shit. I would, that was hardcore Slytherin and I guess you don't get to change your house from when you get sorted when you're 11. No, I don't think you do. No, I guess I'm Slytherin. Damn.
01:10:19
Speaker
That's okay. See, I think Ben thinks he's in the house. That's above all this shit. I find it amusing that how many words do you think in your podcast history, Ben has actually said like word count. It's gotta be you and some guests have probably said more words than Ben has on this podcast. I don't think that's true.
01:10:48
Speaker
Ben also speaks a lot more efficiently than I do. Cause I'm a loquacious motherfucker. Okay. It depends on how much I drink. Here's the thing too, is like some things you don't want me talking about in general, like I feel like I always want to hear your opinion of things. The soap boxes are long drawn out and painful.
01:11:15
Speaker
on some topics. As far as- You know what that brings? Go ahead, Ben. I was just going to say on the Harry Potter houses, I've actually never taken the quiz. I just Googled it and am I supposed to know what the, like are the questions specific to the book? Like I've never really read- No. Okay.
01:11:36
Speaker
No, it's like, would you rather go on a hike or would you rather eat a cheeseburger? And like, it's like questions like this. Yeah. They're real basic and formulaic. I guess we'll find out. Would you rather read a book or would you rather pull a prank on someone?
01:11:58
Speaker
Yeah. Cause some of these, some of the questions are just a little, they seem like very specific to the, to the story. Do you prefer a bird, a snake, a badger or a lion? Well, like, okay. So one of the questions is like, you've received a howler from your parents.
01:12:22
Speaker
So that would be like a letter where you're getting scowled for something. You're getting yelled at. You're getting yelled at by your parents. But see, that's pretty, that's pretty story specific. Yeah, I agree. And it's also really funny because that doesn't come up in the story very often. Yeah, that, that only happens like twice. Yeah, maybe twice. Yeah, twice. That's weird.
01:12:49
Speaker
Yeah. So I think what, well, like here's the thing too, right? If you have four different houses, the dorms are the dorms that different between the houses? Like if you theoretically, yes. The only one that's really actually described as the Gryffindor one, every other one you just kind of assume, but also it's only Harry's room that was really described. Like you don't end up knowing what any other characters like
01:13:13
Speaker
because there's other years and their dorm rooms are different and you don't actually know anything about any of them. Yeah. Well, just the common room, but you never go up to like the dormitory to like be like the dorm rooms look like or anything. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Oh, I don't know. Ben's off a derm string then or something. Probably.
01:13:38
Speaker
a little bit of wizard humor for all of you. So, uh, speaking of Orlando, I heard some sea world news. That's pretty interesting. That's interesting things going on at sea world right now. Most definitely. So first of all, icebreaker no longer has comfort collars and has a lower height restriction, which I saw the, all the news about it. It actually looks like,
01:14:06
Speaker
So who, who decided to do that? Was that a park decision? Uh, it was a partnership between the park and the ride based on the original issue needed to get solved in order to get the height requirement down from 48.
01:14:27
Speaker
So like something happened when it was 48. So they put it up to 54 and then, but they were like, no, we need to solve the solution to get it down to 48. And so then, uh, the park and the manufacturer were working together to get down to 48. Okay. And icebreaker makes a hell of a lot more sense in that park at a 48 inch height requirement than a 54 inch height requirement. Yeah, right. Yeah, seriously. Now Drew, you have a little experience with SeaWorld? Yeah.
01:14:56
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Big fans. So, uh, saw this video of a pipeline. I am fascinated by pipeline, but I still don't think it's any good, right? Like it's a B and M standup coaster. Like, like it, it, I'm not convinced it's going to be a good ride, but like,
01:15:24
Speaker
Someone put this on Twitter and I'm sorry, I don't remember who it was, but like it's genius that SeaWorld's building a standup coaster because most people who are riding coasters now have like, like the general public that are seeing SeaWorld's ad have no idea that standup coasters existed in the past. Some still exist. You're like, Oh, it's revolutionary. You're standing up. It's a surfing coaster. That's badass. And like they, it's a full generation of consumers that have no idea what a standing coaster is. Yeah.
01:15:55
Speaker
And since most parks have removed theirs or done that, there's like only a handful left. I mean, one of them is only, but six hours away from Orlando. Yeah, but the average Orlando guest went on vacation from Orlando, right? Or to Orlando. Unless they came on vacation from Atlanta, like they wouldn't know because like your,
01:16:25
Speaker
people like you just, people come from all over like Iowa and all of that kind of stuff. Right. I know what you're saying. I'm just saying there is a certain irony in the fact that there's only, I think two of those left in the States. Oh, three. Yeah. Carowinds. Yeah. Four. Yeah. Great adventure. Magic mountain. Great adventure Georgia and carowinds.
01:16:49
Speaker
But yeah, um, and now we're getting pipeline and the seats bouncing. Interesting, right? Like, is it going to be where like you can always bounce? And so like, could you time your bounce where you get like bounced and there's air time and like, that would be really cool. Or like, why are the seats bouncing? If they are moving with the G's, that's probably going to be annoying, like bouncing up and down on it. So.
01:17:11
Speaker
Well, it kind of depends on how the seats lock, right? Because if the seats lock at the lowest bounce position and then they unlock after the dispatch and you can lift off, that'd be one thing. But otherwise, if let's say like your bounce is in the highest position, your knees are locked. Wouldn't the G force like you would just like bounce down if your knees kind of give out?
01:17:36
Speaker
Also, aren't there, like, shock absorbers on there? So, like, you're not gonna, like, bounce and, like, you're gonna, like, kind of, like... I don't know how to describe it, kind of, like, gracefully go into the troughs or whatever.
01:17:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of those things where you just get like you get air time when you're standing up and your feet actually. So I was hoping I could bounce myself. Well, I think I think that so from what I understand, the shock absorbers work like a screen like a like a like a screen or not a screen door like a like a storm door, like a glass door where you can open it up as fast as you want, but then it slowly closes like you can't push it faster. You know what I'm talking about?
01:18:23
Speaker
Yeah. Like a door with a damper on it. It only goes one direction fast. And I think that's right. Right. The seeds go up fast and then you slowly come down. Which makes sense because then basically all it would do is just accentuate like moments of
01:18:45
Speaker
either zero or negative G. Yeah, which would be cool. Cause the best part about a standup coaster is the air time. Like that's why Togo's standups are so much fun. It's cause like you go over those bunny Hills and you get that ejector air and your feet come off the floor. You know, I absolutely loved Canada's wonderland and shockwave at Kings Dominion. And I have no idea why everyone hates them because you just had crazy ejector air time on these standup coasters.
01:19:13
Speaker
Yeah. And it seems like this coaster is going to offer that, which the other B&M standups didn't do. The other B&M standups were like, let's take this like super intense sit down coaster where people black out and put standup trains on it. Yeah. Or like, you know,
01:19:32
Speaker
I feel like Mantis maybe might've had a little bit of airtime on the first drop if Cedar Fair wouldn't have put a fucking trim brake right there. Yeah, but your trim had to go somewhere because if not, like the rest of the ride would have been so goddamn uncomfortable. Well, the airtime, there really wasn't an airtime on the drop. It was mainly that S-bend before the mid-course that had it. Okay, but what about the drop off of the brake run? That seems like it would have had some decent airtime.
01:20:01
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it'd be like, it'd be like that one on Iron Wolf. Cause I feel like that's probably the best spot on like, um, Riddler. Riddler, I feel like has more airtime than Mantis.
01:20:19
Speaker
Like Riddler had that one hill that I was like, Oh, kind of floaty. I feel like the mantis, but none of it compared to shockwave and whatever Canada's wonderland one was called. Yeah. The Canada's wonderland was my favorite. The, um, that sky writer. Yeah. I didn't like the Togo's, but the main reason was because that fucking lap bar valid, but I thought the air time was fun.
01:20:50
Speaker
Uh, but I love janky air time. Like Magnum's one of my favorite coasters ever because like it has janky air time that it's not computerized. Yeah, exactly. That's how, I mean, that's how a sky writer, sky writer had those three tiny little bunny Hills before the break run. And, um, that big Hill, that big Hill before the helix is really good too. I don't know. Yeah.
01:21:15
Speaker
So also the test footage of the surf coat or pipeline actually looks pretty fast. Although you know that there's kind of that meme or like
01:21:29
Speaker
whenever someone posts test footage and the first comments always like, Oh, it looks like it's running pretty slow. And then someone's like, well, duh, this is a test run. It'll speed up. And then, but in this case, I wonder if it's the opposite. They like launched it faster for test runs, but they're going to slow it down once it's out, once it opens. Yeah, I don't know. It looks like it kind of stalls at the top of that first
01:21:58
Speaker
overbank. Like it doesn't zoom through the whole turn. It kind of creeps over the top. Yeah.
01:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, it should be cool. I'm also really excited that this opens up this pathway now all year long because it's a great shortcut in the park that is not always open. And it was super annoying when SeaWorld would close the bridge and then you have to walk all the way around the park. So now we have the Bayside pathway to, so it like gives three different access points to the back of the park now, which I think is a big win. Interesting. I heard,
01:22:34
Speaker
They're one of those pathways is closed off and they're doing some construction now. Uh, no, no, no, that's a, that's different part of the park. Oh, okay. So what's going on there? So that's a over by penguin. Um, penguin's got a bunch of walls up in between the penguin ride and the sea lion otter stadium. They've got walls up over there. Oh, okay.
01:23:00
Speaker
So that's heavily rumored to be straddle coaster, similar to, um, the outdoor one that they're opening in San Diego this year, straddle, which if that family penguin themed coaster, uh, that'll do like bonkers numbers for zero. That'll easily be the most popular ride in that park. Is that like wave breaker? Yeah. Same kind of concept, but penguiny. Okay.
01:23:28
Speaker
Yeah. Wave breaker was kind of fun. It is fun. Um, and like, if you think of like the SeaWorld audience is families that have all sorts of ages of children and yet their attractions are all really high height requirement roller coasters and a terrible kid section. And it's been redone, but still like their height requirement on their kids rides like 42 44, like,
01:23:55
Speaker
there's rides on kids rides that my son was already riding Disney roller coasters before he could ride some of the kids rides at sea world. Oh wow. Yeah.
01:24:07
Speaker
But so like it's weird, but I think that's 48 inch, um, straddle coaster will be a massive hit for the park pipeline. I think we'll also do really well. Icebreaker, I think kind of had the disadvantage of it height requirement being incorrect. It's weird. The general public doesn't know what to think of it. The premier trains are weird. Um, but I think down to 48 will probably improve that ridership.
01:24:37
Speaker
Yeah. Icebreaker from the outside. Just when you, if you weren't in a coasters and you look at it, it doesn't look like a thrill coaster. It's like a family coaster. Even if it, even though it launches, it's not that tall. It's orange. I don't know. It just looks like kind of looks like big bear mountain. Yeah. Except for big bear mountain. Big bear mountain would have made more sense. I feel like for sea world then icebreaker did. Yeah.
01:25:07
Speaker
an icebreaker might've made more sense for Dollywood. That's true. Yeah. Cause I agree. Big Bear Mountain would have probably done better at SeaWorld than icebreaker did. Well, um, that, um, whatever that, is it a straddle coaster? The, the wave breaker ride or the jet ski ride? Yeah. Yeah.
01:25:34
Speaker
That's kind of like big bear mountain. It's like a multi-launch family coaster ish. That's fun. Yeah. I think I wish it had water effects, but I thought it was fun. Yeah. It definitely needs to have like at least some like jets on the side. So you kind of feel like there's propulsion. Yeah. Even if it was just on the launch, I think it would be neat.
01:26:01
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Either the launch or like one of the weird turns. Like you do one of those turns and it creates like a wave or something like that. Oh yeah, that'd be cool. But yeah, they could have used that same exact effect that they do with the splashdown with Manta at Orlando.
01:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, the park was really cool. Um, I just came back from Fiesta Texas a couple of weeks ago. It was my first time there in 10 years. So both park, both CX flags and SeaWorld were not new, but like new ish, I guess. And I had a good time at both of them. And I recommend that like Superbowl weekend, February trip to San Antonio, because I didn't wait in line for either ride.
01:26:46
Speaker
or either park. I didn't have a line the entire time. Nice. Yeah, the first meetup we ever had was at Fiesta Texas and Sea World. It was literally about a week before the world shut down. Oh, that's wild. But yeah, that's a great time of year to be there because we didn't have much in the way of crowds to contend with either.
01:27:12
Speaker
Yeah. In fact, shit, I think Texas Stingray was like one of the last coasters rode before the world shut down. Yeah. I mean, that was SeaWorld's only coaster that opened in 2020, even though they were supposed to open Iron Gwazi and Icebreaker and Pantheon and Emperor, and they were all ready to go. Yeah. It just so happened that that one, you know, had such an early opening date.
01:27:41
Speaker
We happen to luck out with that. Yeah, that is a nice park. And I really look forward to them like kind of filling it in. Mm hmm. Because it seemed like there's a hell of a lot of dead space in that park. Was the swing ride there when you were there?
01:27:58
Speaker
title swing title surge, the, uh, the big SNS swing right on the water. No. Okay. So that's a sweet little filler ride right across from journey to Atlantis. They got a big giant SNS that faces you down to the water and all of that. So that's, that's a nice little filler. Yeah.
01:28:15
Speaker
They're slowly filling it in. And then another dead space that I don't know if this was there, but this was a dead space when I went last time that I noticed they filled in was, um, across from steel eel. There's now like a patio bar that is on the water with like Texas craft beer and full bar. So that was pretty sweet.
01:28:37
Speaker
Oh, nice. And it had its own merchandise. It had its own coasters and koozies. So I bought one of the, uh, the lone star bar or whatever it's called SeaWorld San Antonio. And it was probably the only merchandise I saw on the entire park that said SeaWorld San Antonio. Most of SeaWorld's merchandise just says SeaWorld on it, which I, interesting. I don't really like that move, but I understand from like a,
01:29:03
Speaker
bulk buying move that you can put them in all three parks and I get it, but I don't really like it. As a person who collects patches for my jacket, I only have fucking one SeaWorld patch because they all just sell SeaWorld patches. You can get a variety of different animals on the patch, but the shit just says SeaWorld. My complaint with that park was the
01:29:29
Speaker
large, uh, large midways of blacktop and the weirdness of like certain rides opening at different times. Remember that? Cause it was, um, when we were there. Yeah. I mean, that's a very Bush sees thing to do. They see what Orlando does it. Bush Tampa does it. They all have staggered openings to like, and then they wonder why guest flow is weird in the park. And I'm like, well, you open your rides in a certain order. So guests go a certain direction in your park.
01:30:00
Speaker
Like Steel Eel opened first and then like the back half opened later. Oh yeah, that's right. That's so fucking weird. Yeah. So it was like we rode, you know, it's like we rode, I think we were at Texas Stingray first and we rode the water ride, but then we had to wait almost like an hour for Steel Eel to open, at least when we were there.
01:30:24
Speaker
Okay. The last time I went, it was before Texas Stingray and Stelio was the first ride. It was Stelio and the kid section opened first and then like, um, the invert opened later and then even later was journey to Atlantis. But I guess that makes sense that it goes the other direction now, since that's the newer stuff on that side. Yeah. I remember we like ended up just kind of like,
01:30:52
Speaker
Walking through the kids area to kill time. Hmm. But I love that they have the old penguin encounter, like the one that SeaWorld Orlando used to have with the moving walkway and you just get to stare at penguins and it's not cold. Yes, we did that when we were there. It was awesome. Yeah.
01:31:10
Speaker
I mean, that's the part about SeaWorld that, uh, always conflicts me, but I'm like, fuck it. I already paid the ticket price and I would have paid it just for the coasters. So might as well enjoy. Yeah. Good old SeaWorld. Oh, SeaWorld. They make some good moves, but they also make some weird moves, but a big fan of their operation or big fan of the park. Um, I feel like they have a lot of policies that are not quite guest friendly that I think they should address.
01:31:40
Speaker
Yeah. That park has weird. I feel like every time I have an issue with the policy, it's, it's those parks. Um, like, so like icebreaker now has the seat belts and not the comfort collars, but they check the seat belt first and then they recheck the lap bar. So like it's a double check now where it's like check the seat belt and they go all the way down the row and check the seat belt. Cause the, the sea world chain, if you have a seat belt and a lap bar, you check the seat belt first and then you lock the lap bars and then check the lap bars.
01:32:09
Speaker
So like icebreaker operation is going to be significantly slower because they now are double checking when before it was pulled on one thing, you pulled like the comfort collar and that also checks the lap bar, right? So now you have more to check and sees has weird operations. That's exactly why the fuck deja vu used to run so goddamn slow.
01:32:35
Speaker
Yeah, because the poorly placed seat belts. Yep, it had the seat belt across the lap, and they would lock the over the shoulder in the up position, go around, check everybody's seat belt, and then lower the restraints and lock them and then check the restraints.
01:32:56
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, and I'm not about that life. I'm all about efficiency and dispatches, get these trains in and out and on with life. I think the best guest service you can have to your guests is fast moving lines. Cause if your guests are in lines, they're not spending money. If your guests are out on the midway, they might get a beer. They might get a snack. They might buy a plushie. Uh, they might buy the on-ride photo for the ride. Well, the, the algorithm in rollercoaster tycoon was, was perfect, right? If a guest leaves a ride happy,
01:33:26
Speaker
and they're on the midway, they're more likely to buy something. Yeah. Well, I mean, when are we going to be at the point where parks are just all virtual queue? I don't think you can do it yet. I think a park needs to be ground up.
01:33:46
Speaker
with virtual queue in mind, and it needs to have as many attractions as the magic kingdom. And I think that's the only way for that to work, right? Like you need rides where you're waiting in line for, but you need things to do while you're not waiting in line. And there's never enough things to do that are not waiting in line. Like that's, that's the point where the theme parks aren't there yet. Right. So
01:34:11
Speaker
Yeah, you need, but you need other things to do. Well, Epic universe is going to be a problem too, because if people aren't waiting in line for those Mario rides, you got to buy the up, upcharge bands to play in the land. So like you made that an upcharge to play.
01:34:27
Speaker
Um, but yeah, Epic might be able to do it. I don't know, man. It's just, I think, I think it's tough to go full virtual queue, but I wouldn't shock me if they tried it because they tried with volcano Bay, although volcano Bay definitely had, uh, some hiccups at the beginning. But how do you tell guests that came to this park to ride the Mario ride? I'm sorry. Our virtual queue is filled for the day.
01:34:52
Speaker
Disney does that shit all the fucking time. I know. And Universal, I don't know. Maybe, we'll see. I don't know. I don't think it'll work. How many guests on every single day are getting turned away from Guardians of the Galaxy right now?
01:35:13
Speaker
That's valid. I was thinking about universal's operation and not Disney's operation. Um, but Disney does not give a fuck about the guest experience right now. So does universal, does guardian universal still does? Does guardians not have a, um, did they not have a standby? No, you either need a virtual queue or you need a lightning lane.
01:35:35
Speaker
And it's actually really, it's not that challenging to get a return time for guardians. Um, it is like right now during spring break, but in general it's not. The problem is you do it at 7am. Like I don't want to get up at 7am to then find out I'm going to ride this ride six hours later, right? Like that's the annoying part for me. That's fair, but at the same time,
01:36:01
Speaker
you know, you wake up at 7am, your ride's not until six hours later, you can have breakfast and not have to worry about getting there and rope dropping to get to that ride. Oh, I agree. And that's what I do, right? But like, I still have to wake up at 7am. I don't, I don't understand why you can't just enter the raffle the night before, right? And then it's like,
01:36:24
Speaker
I don't know. I think there's a better way to do it. And instead of making me get up at 7 a.m. to do it. But I think Disneyland's model is a little better in terms of like, it'll everything is open for booking once you're in the park, your ticket scanned, you're good to go. And that's how it used to be, right?
01:36:46
Speaker
That's used to be how rise, that's how rise of resistance opened. Like we're on, I guess probably version four of virtual queue. Um, cause it originally started as soon as you were in the park, you could scan for the virtual queue and there wasn't a limit of how many virtual queues you could get. Like if you got off and it was still available, you could virtual queue again. And that's how rise opened for the first like three days. Um, and then it went to virtual queue opened at 9 AM.
01:37:17
Speaker
Uh, and then it went to at nine and then two or like one or something. I forget. There was like a, a second time where it, it dropped more virtual cues and now guardians, uh, on like as three drops, if you're a hotel guest. So.
01:37:37
Speaker
it's, it's really not challenging to get a guardian's boarding pass. It's just annoying, I guess, because you should be able to wait in line if you paid a ticket to go to a park. Well, the other thing too is like, how fucked up is it that a general park guest needs to understand this like huge learning curve to getting on rides? Oh, and then like,
01:38:02
Speaker
for shits and giggles. I was explaining to my dad today, like how genie plus Disney genie and lightning lane all works. And it's just wild. The concept of like a skip the line pass. Okay. Yeah. So like everyone thinks of it as you pay a certain amount of money and you can skip the lines, whether at one time or unlimited and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, no, so you pay like $25 and then you go on the app and then you book a time for a reservation for a ride.
01:38:28
Speaker
Uh, and then two hours later, you can book another reservation and the ride you want is not necessarily guaranteed because that ride might already be sold out for the day after the first round. So you gotta be very careful. And the first ride you want to do is has to be the one that you definitely want to do. So it doesn't sell out. Or there's some strategy where you pick a ride that has less availability if you want to do it, but you don't necessarily want to do it first.
01:38:47
Speaker
And I was like, and then you gotta get your individual lightning lanes. Cause there's two rides in each park that are on not on Disney plus or genie plus, but you gotta buy an individual ticket for those. And those are like 25 bucks a piece for an individual ride. Like imagine paying all this money to come in and then to skip the line to ride Tron, you got to pay another 25 bucks.
01:39:09
Speaker
Well, technically, you don't have to pay for genie plus to get the individual lightning lanes. Uh huh. Yeah. So if you just really cared about Tron, but you would stand by for everything else, you could just buy the Tron lightning lane. Although, although Disney does not make that clear at all. OK, so is lightning lane a la carte? Sometimes only some rides.
01:39:38
Speaker
two rides per park. Oh, it's only the most popular slash newest attractions that are individual lightning lanes. Most other well, not most, almost everything at Magic Kingdom is genie plus.
01:39:57
Speaker
and then most of the other like popular rides are genie plus. There's probably only, and someone will probably quote me on this, but there's probably only four rides on property that are not on genie plus or the individual lightning lane. Like you got the Mexican boat progress, you got carousel progress, you got the Mexican boat ride, people mover, astro orbiter, triceratops spins, and that might be it.
01:40:24
Speaker
Yeah. Stitches is closed. Monster sink, lab floor, maybe. Monster link, ad floor is on it. You can book a time for that. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. So genie plus is most everything. And then the individual laning lanes is just the newest slash most popular shit.
01:40:44
Speaker
But those ones can be what, like 20 bucks for a single ride. Yeah. I mean, we're at the point now where it's costing guests more to ride a ride one time than it is an hour for the cast member to work that ride. Like I know that was kind of like a deep thought there, but like your cast members are making 15 and you're charging people $25 to skip the line on guardians of the galaxy. Going back to the executives at 45 million a year.
01:41:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Disney is making an absolute killing off of this. Like 90% of Guardians capacity is dedicated to individual lightning lanes at $25 apiece. They're making like over $100,000 a day on this. You know, you bring up a good topic. I'll just say it again, because we were rallying about this last week. Fucking paycast members more.
01:41:39
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, Orlando is a mess right now. Jobs all went to 15 after the pandemic and everywhere to live in Orlando went, okay, cool. Your rent is now 20% more expensive than it was last year. And it's just gone up 20% every single year to the point where like,
01:42:01
Speaker
My apartment that I was reaching to afford when I was living in SeaWorld or working for SeaWorld was $1,300. In five years, that apartment now is going for $2,800.
01:42:14
Speaker
Holy fuck. Yeah. So that's what's going on in Orlando. Like I don't, I, I don't think you can, there's not a number where you can pay people enough to be able to afford to live down here. Like it is a not
Housing Crisis and Theme Park Workforce
01:42:29
Speaker
a, it is a drastically terrible situation that is going on now in Orlando that a lot of your beloved attractions are going to have staffing problems real soon because no one's going to be able to afford to live here. Good God.
01:42:44
Speaker
Unless we have a housing crash, which would usually hits like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Florida. So. Yeah, but is it going to hit the same places as hard since they all got hit so hard during the last one? I think it generally hits places that have the highest amount of like speculation and big landlords, which that was definitely what Orlando was.
01:43:12
Speaker
It's just people buying up hundreds of houses at a time, renting them all out at top dollar. I don't know, Ben. What's the corporate landlord situation like in Denver? It's not that bad because it was hit harder early on. The problem here is usually housing stock. Our corporate landlord percentage is much lower than it is in Phoenix or Vegas.
01:43:40
Speaker
Cause it, so usually the corporate landlord follows the places that build the most amount of housing and Orlando builds a shit ton of housing. I did that. They keep building and building and building. Yeah. So it's like, I now on my way to work probably past 20 different construction projects for either apartments or neighborhoods. Yeah. Okay. So, and all those are owned by single companies and then they were like, all right, 3,200 a month. Okay. Unpopular thought.
01:44:10
Speaker
I'm certainly not advocating for it, but it could be a potential solution. Company towns. That's it. I, I stress about that because your housing is tied to your employment. And I think there needs to be some way where you don't lose your housing just because you got laid off or something like that. You know what I mean?
01:44:41
Speaker
That's definitely a extremely valid concern. Even if there's employee housing, it's the same leadership that is not raising your wages is also the same leadership that will gladly raise your rent once you're in that position.
01:45:06
Speaker
So imagine being in a position where you already live in a company town, they're already taking all your money and you're not getting a raise and now you're just stuck because they know you have nowhere else to go. Yeah, I said it was not a good one. I'm just saying it's a solution because it doesn't really seem like there's many others out here.
01:45:29
Speaker
No, I think yeah. And I think you'll also see an expansion of the Disney College Program. I bet you they build another campus. And it wouldn't shock me if Universal also goes the route of a college program.
01:45:43
Speaker
And that would not surprise me at all. Go heavy on the international guests. Like even Dollywood has already gone like Dollywood now has internationals. And I've never, I had never seen that before until recently. And like, you just, they just all have to now. Like just imagine where you have to live in the world to think, yeah, you know, a summer in Tennessee sounds fantastic.
01:46:10
Speaker
Well, I guess when your choice is, do you want to go to a summer in Tennessee or do you want to go to, I have no idea how long I will be here in Qatar. Which one, which one are you picking? Yeah, no, I understand. I worked with a guy at Six Flags when I was in rides who was from Montenegro. I don't think that country exists anymore.
01:46:33
Speaker
Yeah, but it's cool. Cause then their program ends and they get to, um, explore America for a couple of weeks before they have to head back. So it's, it's a kind of like work visa, but you also get like a little vacation out of it. But I guess the answer is you were, you go anywhere where you work somewhere where their money is worth more than your money. So you make more money going there. Yeah. That's what I remember. Like spend money to do these programs.
01:47:04
Speaker
I assume so, but I assume you, it can't be super expensive and I bet you some of it, the employer has to pay for some of this, right? Like, or else there wouldn't be a benefit to do it. Yeah. From what I understand, um, after talking to the internationals at Cedar Point when I worked there was that basically like the pay that you get
01:47:28
Speaker
Like the pay that Cedar Point pays you is still like two to three times more than what you could get in your home country. And so even though you spent, have to like spend money on food and all that stuff, like you still come home with like a pretty decent paycheck. Um, and then yeah, like I remember like they usually have like a two week break where I know like the Cedar Point people would go to like Niagara Falls and then they'd go to like New York city or Chicago and whatnot. So.
01:47:58
Speaker
Like it's, it definitely seems like some people, like it seems like people are taking advantage of when they are, but at the same time, like it's still better than what they're getting back home, which is like fucked up in its own way. But I don't know.
01:48:16
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's definitely fucked up because it's like, well, Hey, American exploitation is at least better than for an exploitation. Yeah. But I mean, even the college program is sort of exploitation like, Hey, come take a semester off and go work for Disney world. This'll look great on a resume. We promise. Yep. Here you're going to be working is a fry cook in this fry stand here in the magic kingdom till 2 AM.
01:48:43
Speaker
Oh, and because of your employment status, we actually pay you $2 and 38 cents an hour. Thanks for being an intern. No, no, no, no. Trust us. This will get you a job. Yeah. Oh, a good paying job somewhere. Hey, can I ask a ton of people when I did my college program why you're doing this, they would say, oh, this is going to look great on a resume. And I'm like, what fucking resume is going to give a fuck that you worked there besides another attraction in Orlando, right? Like,
01:49:13
Speaker
My I see I don't know, though, because my wife told me she got like both of her jobs out of college because Disney came up in the interview. Well, that's cool. Basically like it was on her resume and the interviewer was like a Disney fan or found that interesting. So obviously indirect, but I could see how it would benefit you just from that perspective. Yeah, that's fair.
01:49:42
Speaker
Um, the only time Disney really came up and the person was super interested into it was when I interviewed at Chuck E. Cheese, uh, in like off season, one of my off seasons at Cedar Point. And I had just done a Disney college program like a couple of weeks earlier. And they were like, Oh, tell me about this. And we were discussing the college program and stuff. And it was interesting. I had the manager at that Chuck E. Cheese was like, if I ever get out of here,
01:50:11
Speaker
The Chuck E. Cheese at that time had an absolute amazing manager bonus program for the general manager that like the general managers could be making several million dollars if your store performed just pretty good. Yeah, that's cool. I mean, yeah, it seems like Chuck E. Cheese actually has decent, uh, like it's not bad as an employee there. No, I had a great time when I worked for Chuck E. Cheese.
01:50:38
Speaker
How many fucking pictures of Miller Lite and recycled pizzas do you have to sell to get to a million dollars? All of your money in chucky cheeses and arcades and birthday parties. That makes sense. Like that's, that's where the money is, is arcade games and that like food and beverage never makes a ton of money in any attraction. It's just something that like makes some money and extends the guests time in the attraction, right?
01:51:05
Speaker
Like even like Walt Disney world, like your money is in hotels and your admission to the parks. Like the reason why you offer food is so people don't go elsewhere for food. So then they stop spending money there, but it like is not the, the money maker. So like, what's the most horrifying thing you saw in a ball pit? Oh, we actually, ours, my store didn't have a ball pit. They got rid of them because they were not sanitary. And so Chuckie cheese is completely phased out ball pits.
01:51:34
Speaker
Lucky you. Yeah.
01:51:38
Speaker
So did you ever have like a five-night it's a Freddy situation? Not really. Um, no, but like sometimes if you forget to turn the animatronics off, but you mute them and, uh, one night a week we would do like token counts. So you would pull the tokens and make sure they matched the, the game meters inside there. And you would discard any ugly tokens or tokens that looked like, or from other arcades, because that was the other,
01:52:05
Speaker
best kept secret of working at Chuck E. Cheese is Chuck E. Cheese tokens worked at every other arcade in town and every other arcade in town, their tokens work to Chuck E. Cheese and other arcades are better redemption prizes than Chuck E. Cheese. So, um, I'm not going to say I stole this, but I have a Nintendo Wii that I got from an arcade that was mostly bought with using Chuck E. Cheese tokens at another arcade. Nice.
01:52:32
Speaker
How many, how many is that for the Wii? How many was the, what was the prize? Uh, Oh, it was some, some 500,000 tickets or something. Nice. Uh, so like, you know, there's like coin pusher games, right? Where you drop coins in and it knocks coins down and then it gives you tickets. Well, when you bring a jar of Chuck E. Cheese tokens and you can just pump in coin, coin, coin, coin, coin, coin, coin, it's eventually just going to knock an absolute fuck ton off. Cause you spam played it.
01:53:02
Speaker
That makes sense. And then you eventually are just going to get enough tickets to do this. Valid. How many tickets can a machine ticket printer hold or dispenser hold? Fuck done. Um, especially if you use more than one set of ticket, a ticket back when the day when tickets were not on the cards and tickets were on a handful tickets, um,
01:53:31
Speaker
A machine could hold three books and a book probably was like 10 tickets long and I don't know the size of my palm. So you're probably talking
01:53:47
Speaker
I don't know, probably 100,000 tickets a machine can hold. And it really sucks if you drop one of those, right? Because then you just have an absolute fuck ton of tickets on the floor. And your best bet is just to pick them up and throw them away rather than folding them to something that fits back into a machine. Yeah. I worked at an arcade for a few months.
01:54:12
Speaker
And when you consider the amount of waste that those fucking ticket rolls created, cause each of those ticket rolls can only be used once each. Yeah. They get printed and they've been embossed on the sides. That's it. They're done. So like literally you just like the ticket eater machines, you remember those that would count them up. It would just be a trash fucking can underneath inside.
01:54:42
Speaker
And like most of the tickets would make it into the trash can, but you would have some that didn't. And then you have to sweep the thing out at the end of the night. Cause nobody ever thought to just tape the fucking bag all the way across. Yeah.
01:54:58
Speaker
Or make the ramp have like a funnel that goes actually down into the basket. Yeah. Those things basically just free fall. Yeah. There's like a paper shredder into a trash can the size of like a kitchen or like a big trash can, but like it's just a paper shredder above it that like drops down in there. Oh, the good old days of arcades. Thousands of, I bet you all of the plastic straws being changed to paper.
01:55:27
Speaker
That was all balanced out by one day of arcades switching to not having tickets. Yeah. Guests are genuinely still confused about that in arcades, where they're like, it said I won 400 tickets, but I didn't get it. I'm like, it's on your game card. Yeah, that shit is very self-explanatory. You put money on the card, you swiped it to play the game. And it's interesting because, like, Dave and Busters has been doing that for years. But I feel like a lot of other arcades have just
01:55:56
Speaker
more recently have shifted over to the point where it's still kind of like new to guests, which is weird because I don't know. It seems a lot, not just, you know, ecological ecologically friendly, but like just more efficient in general to the customer. You don't have to stand at the ticket Mount Muncher or you don't have to weigh the tickets. Um, yeah, way more efficient.
01:56:26
Speaker
So then here's, here's a question I've always had here. You've had experience running arcades. What the fuck is the deal with shitty candy? That's cheap. Specifically the, um, it's not laughy taffy. The, uh,
01:56:45
Speaker
I choose. I choose are good. I choose. I love the high choose. I choose a pretty, pretty, you know, those, um, I think they're called like noun leaders. They were like five individually wrapped pieces of candy stuck together and they were hard as shit.
01:57:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean a lot of it has to do with what your vendor puts on your redemption thing because there's redemption companies and so you get something from like either Rhode Island Novelty or BMI or Redemption Plus and you'll see them like these are booths at IAPA and typically you just order all of your redemption through one company and
01:57:24
Speaker
they like calculate your ticket values of everything based on like math and the, so like when you get prizes from them, you'll have like your five ticket box and your 10 ticket box. And like your shitty candy is just your low end stuff because you buy it in such bulk that it doesn't cost you more than like a fraction of a penny for that Tootsie Roll.
01:57:45
Speaker
But the deal is, it's sitting in this case, so it's impossible for it to not look like the arcade bought one of those bags of trick or treat candy when it went on clearance. Oh, that's essentially what it is. You open your cardboard box from your redemption provider, and it's like 50 of those bags that look just like what your trick or treat bags look like.
01:58:18
Speaker
Because if you think about it, you cut the bin open and it's like the right size to go into your little redemption bin. You cut the bag open. So like that's how it's like stored and inventoried. That makes a lot of sense. It's just like, I guess really what I'm getting to is what the fuck is in this candy that it only costs like 0.02 cents for a piece of it. Oh yeah. And then your grocery stores sell it for like,
01:58:46
Speaker
$5.99 a bag, $12 a bag during Halloween time. You're like, that's still 98% fucking eggshells and food dye. Yep. So like those same companies then will also send you a bag of like Casio watches and. Yeah, you can order high end items like you're you're you're super all the way up top shelf items like your Xboxes and stuff like that.
01:59:13
Speaker
Um, are not through that company that you do yourself through like Best Buy or Amazon or something like that. And you manually add that into your redemption. Um, but your, your headphones, your, your watches, your lava lamps, your traffic lights, all of your wall items, like even things like rock them, sock them robots and like monopoly games and just like you're at anything else you get from your redemption company.
01:59:42
Speaker
like virtual reality helmets, TVs. Yeah. It's just the really hard things to get like your Roomba's, your Xbox is your, your game systems. That's really your only like thing where you got to go out and buy that yourself.
02:00:01
Speaker
Are these the same companies that like exploit school age children to sell shit out of catalogs to adults to earn those same fucking prizes? I doubt it. I bet you the prizes come from those companies, but I bet you the magazine sales companies are the ones that are buying those companies from the redemption company or prizes from the redemption company. Oh, yeah. OK, that makes sense. Technically a different racket, but you're going for the same consumer base.
02:00:31
Speaker
Yeah. Is there any redemption company horror stories of getting like inappropriate gifts or anything like that? No, but every great once in a while a company will send the wrong attraction stuff to you. Like in a shipment, like you'll, you'll get a shipment of a hundred cases of souvenir bottles. And one of the cases is supposed to go to Kennywood.
02:01:01
Speaker
That happens fairly frequently, like not like super frequently, but like often enough that I'm aware that it happens. And then you're like, what the fuck do I do with this? And usually the answer is just throw it away. Makes sense. You're like, what am I going to do with fucking
02:01:19
Speaker
700 Bigfoot on the strip t-shirts. Yeah. But like it wouldn't be cost effective to then ship it back to the company to then ship it to them because everything's sent by freight. So like having a case, a single case, it's not cost effective to do anything with it. So it's just like a write off for the company and you, you get a credit.
02:01:43
Speaker
I mean, you, you could keep them for the, in the loop prize closet. Yeah. I mean, I have, um, so Ben, you worked at Cedar Point and so do you remember the Cedar Point 10 sale once a year where there was just random, it's like a, basically a Cedar Point flea market. Uh, yeah, I think so. So my, I think it was my second year I went in and they had these, uh, Cedar Point bags and you could fill the bag for $50 with whatever you wanted.
02:02:14
Speaker
Um, and I went ham and found some ridiculous stuff and including like a, uh, an amusement park in Denver area in Denmark, um, their souvenir cup, a six flags, great America hourglass, um,
02:02:33
Speaker
a old school Canada's wonderland paperweight and just random things at a Cedar Point sale, uh, two cups from Tokyo Disney. See, um, a Dorny park snow globe, just random, ridiculous things I found at this flea market at Cedar points, like flea market one year. Nice. Yeah. We're, um,
02:02:56
Speaker
I think they used to, whenever, where did they, where did they hold that? Was that on property? It was like behind the games pavilion, like where that one time clock was if you came in through the front of the park. Um, but I assume most of the time you didn't park up front and you parked in the back of the park. Yeah. Except for some days they wouldn't let us, they would like, uh, they started cracking down on it on weekends, which is always a shit show.
02:03:24
Speaker
Yeah. Like a time clock right by like the games pavilion. That was where it was held. Yeah. Actually the second season, there was some big, uh, drama within, uh, like with our manager, because I had a platinum pass. And so it was one of those things where I had the sticker for commons, but I also had the platinum pass. So it was like,
02:03:49
Speaker
I'm a guest. Like why are you refusing me to park back here? Because I'm a paying guest. But then it was like, but you have the sticker, you're an employee. And so it was this like weird gray area that, uh, cause some problems. Yes, I can see that because like parking isn't going to know that you're a guest when they're looking or the security force is not going to know that you're a guest. Right. Yeah. Good. Let's see your point. I lived in commons for a month and then I moved into an apartment and never looked back.
02:04:20
Speaker
See, I, I don't know. Commons was awful, but I kind of liked it for what it was. Um, but I mean, if you have shitty roommates, that'll, that'll change. I liked my roommates. I just, for the same price, we put six of us in a two bedroom apartment right next to subway and we had our own private bathroom in our own kitchen. I mean, that is a pretty major upgrade. Yeah.
02:04:48
Speaker
Same amount of people per room, but a bathroom and a kitchen and a living room. Yeah, that's nice. We all just slept on air mattresses, which I guess is more comfortable in the, uh, the jail, um, bunk bed mats. It was got nice air mattress from Meyer. Perfect.
02:05:16
Speaker
luxury. Yeah. Well, and I mean, this is kind of like, I hate to sound like that old man that says in my youth, this is what we did. But like, that was just a reasonable accommodation in my head and my roommate's head to how to combat one, the housing and two, the low wages of working in a theme park.
02:05:40
Speaker
Um, and like nowadays, like that would be considered like inhumane to have six people in a two bedroom apartment. Like they'd be like, no, like that's never one should have their own room and stuff like that. And that was kind of how like I made it in Florida in the beginning too. Um, because Florida has always been expensive, but it wasn't like stupid expensive, but like we've never been paying our attractions team members a
02:06:05
Speaker
a wage that matched the orlando housing so everyone always had roommates and like in the beginning you shared actual like rooms with people in apartments and then as people slowly get promoted then you. End it up like people moved out and you got new places and you then eventually had your own room but like. Weirdly enough through like relationships and roommates and areas all that kind of stuff i've never lived alone in orlando like had my own place to myself.
02:06:32
Speaker
which I just think is interesting. It's really more of a, yeah, I guess we were never paid well, but I also think it was interesting that I've just always lived with someone my entire life. Cause I lived with my family. Then I went to college and lived with my roommates. And then I've just always lived with someone. Yeah. And that kind of goes back to that, um, that, um, or Zach were the quote we were talking about yesterday, yesterday or last week.
02:07:02
Speaker
about the apartment full-time where it's like, there are certain full-time jobs where you should afford housing, but like, I guess if you're in the college program or you're, I don't know, 18 to 22, like, you can live with a few roommates. That's just kind of what you have to do.
02:07:23
Speaker
I'm not necessarily it's what you should have to do, but it is what you do. Yeah. But me at 18 would have absolutely ruined a place if I was living by myself, it would have been gross and dirty and I would have done laundry like once a month and like I would have had nobody to check up and been like, Hey, you're a slob. I just kind of would have lived my 18 year old to 22 year old self where I would be like hungover and stuff like that. Like, yeah, it was probably a terrible idea if I lived by myself.
02:07:54
Speaker
Look, I'm not saying it's not a necessity. I'm just disagreeing fundamentally with you should have to. You shouldn't have to have roommates. That should be a choice. It can be even like a money saving choice, but you should be able to have some sort of affordable housing. Right. That's exactly what I'm saying is if you're working full time,
02:08:17
Speaker
you should not have to have a roommate. And especially you should not have to have more than one. So now how do we solve this? Not to derail this at almost midnight Orlando time, but, um, how do you solve this problem?
02:08:34
Speaker
of wages go up and then suddenly landlords are now being assholes and knowing their people make more because you have to report how much you make. And then they're like, Oh, well we can charge this much for these apartments now. Cause that's how much these people are making. Right? Like
02:08:49
Speaker
How do we solve that problem? Okay. So my solution is two prong, but it can't work because of the current government. But let's put that aside, right? Here's my idea. Governments can change. They can be overthrown at any time. That's what tyranny is for. So, um, I think a combination of things, one, introduce the old New York idea of rent control to
02:09:19
Speaker
I think aggressive policy to ensure minimum wage is actually a livable wage. So like, yeah, the, the only problem is rent control. Like as after like a bunch of like endless studies with the day, she found that rent control makes rent worse.
02:09:49
Speaker
So really the solution is you have to... So it's a weird problem because it's so region specific. Really the only way you lower rent is if you completely flood a market with new housing. So you have to build so much housing that there's so much competition for rentals that
02:10:10
Speaker
property owners have to become competitive with attracting tenants. But the downside is in a place like Orlando, if you build a shit ton of housing and rent goes down, you're just going to become more attractive for people to move in from out of state. You'll just have more people move in, right? The more you build, the more people- I mean, Orlando's population is insanely high now compared to it was when I moved here in 2010, right?
02:10:35
Speaker
You used to have I for traffic when there was rush hour and that was the only traffic you really had. And now I sit in traffic all day, every day, no matter where I want to go in Orlando, none of our roads are highways. So they were all orange groves that are just the infrastructure isn't there. And we just sit in traffic. Orlando was never supposed to be as full as it is right now. Okay. Alternative idea then.
02:11:03
Speaker
raise the threshold for section eight housing. Yeah. And I guess incentivize places to accept section eight folks. Cause that's, that's your other problem is people get it and then places like now we're not taking those.
02:11:18
Speaker
Well, so there's this new concept. Basically, it's like market housing. So what it is, it's like a co-op. So what it is, it's like a collection of, I guess, not necessarily donors, but it's like a
02:11:36
Speaker
I guess it's a cooperative of small business people who buy a plot of land at market, they build a unit at market, and then they rent the units out for exactly what the market rate would be to break even. So it's not owned by a giant property management company or a corporate landlord. But it requires the city to basically buy the land at market rate.
02:12:06
Speaker
and not sell it out to investors. That's what Vancouver is doing right now. It's an interesting concept because basically over time, it reduces that incentive for corporate landlords because eventually you have so much at-market housing that there's no way to make a profit off housing. That's really the only way you can do it. You have to take that profit element out of housing
02:12:33
Speaker
Yep. And I guess that's the problem because we in America, we need to make a profit on everything. Like even our recycling programs don't make a profit. So not all recycling actually gets recycled. And to compound that issue, it's not just America, it's Florida. You know, I'm not aware of what goes on in the rest of the world because I know what happens in, uh, in my central Florida bubble.
02:12:58
Speaker
where we had crazy weather today. Just going to throw that out there. It was like hurricane force winds and torrential downpours. Like it was pretty crazy. So what's wild weather today? What's funny is, um, so like people viewed, I don't know. It's like people in Denver think that it's just like, you know, outdoor utopia and it's progressive and all that stuff. But we have the second worst recycling rate in the country.
02:13:27
Speaker
because like we have recycling bins, but it all goes to the same place. Yeah. Well only like the nice end plastics are even like valuable to recycle. Like most plastic is, it costs more to recycle it and to, and it reuses in a lesser quality. Like it's a plastic problem. That really is the problem, but this is now super environmental and
02:13:53
Speaker
not theme parky. And I don't know how to transfer from here to our other Orlando story, but yeah, that's okay. I got one for you guys since we're on recycling. Here in Chicago, our program is so shit. Every building has their own recycling dumpster, right? But if you fuck up and put the wrong thing in the recycling dumpster,
02:14:19
Speaker
which, you know, buildings with 50 units that happens all the time, the garbage people will fucking refuse to pick it up until the building owner pays them. So we'll have full ass dumpsters of recycling for weeks. And then ultimately all of it just goes to the trash anyway. Yeah. Because the wrong shit's in there. Yeah, it's not good.
02:14:47
Speaker
Yay. Also not good Orlando free fall tower, but it's going away now. Thank God. It can't hurt anyone anymore. Yeah.
02:14:58
Speaker
Yeah, but the owner is still alive. Wow. I'm just glad that it's not going to be there. Cause I mean, I already think like abandoned rides are not good. And to have an abandoned ride, like on your iconic strip, I, I guess, or I drive isn't super iconic, but like you can see it from everywhere. And now it's going away, which is good because
02:15:24
Speaker
It killed someone and that's bad. And it killed someone in a way that a theme park or an attraction should never kill someone. And we're tearing it down. And that's good. That's much better than having it just stand there and been like, yep, we fucked up. We're terrible people. And we're just going to abandon this year. What do you think? Is it going to Columbia or Brazil? Well,
02:15:49
Speaker
my theory was it was going to go down the street, uh, to another attraction on I drive. But then our governor said that it was not going to be erected in the state of Florida ever again. Um, which he says a lot of things. So I don't necessarily know if that was true or not. Yeah. Palm beach city said, hold my beer. But I guess we'll see. Like the villages really want their new drop tower.
02:16:17
Speaker
I can't believe that joke hit. You guys knew what I was talking about. I watched a documentary about that shit like a month ago. So weird. It is a weird place. Florida is a lot of weird places. Yeah, I think Florida is just a collection of odd communities.
02:16:40
Speaker
It's pretty much all it is. Orlando is just one of those odd communities. Sorry, everyone that's down there. Oh man, that's exactly what it is. We have an entire community based on theme parks, like the entire economics of this city or theme parks, right? Like people either work in the hotels or the restaurants or the attractions or the convention center to cater for the tourists that are here.
02:17:06
Speaker
Is the owner of icon park is his house still standing? Well, so icon park is like a mall, right? And the slingshot drop tower was a tenant that rented a plot of land. Like a TGA Fridays would rent a plot of land or something like that. And so they built it there. So like icon park is like owned by a company that owns malls. Like they're really unrelated to this whole thing.
02:17:34
Speaker
But the
Festival Failures and Modern Lessons
02:17:35
Speaker
slingshot drop tower is owned by the same people that own other slingshot and drop towers around the state of Florida. They have a slingshot in Panama City. They own the Star Flyer that's just outside of Icon Park. They own the two slingshots in Kissimmee, Florida, the one in Daytona.
02:17:57
Speaker
They own those attractions and they rented a spot at, or they leased land in Icon Park. Um, I have no idea if his house is still standing though. I made a joke about burning Disney execs houses last week. No, no, nope, nope. Not doing it. Can we get arrested for incinerating a riot? Yeah. I'm not going out like Fred Duris, God damn it.
02:18:28
Speaker
That's a Woodstock 99. That was a Woodstock joke. Oh man, I was so into Limp Biscuit at that time of my life too. Me too. Me too. Oh man, I definitely had the CD of like the best of hits from like Woodstock. It's still amazing to me that the insane Clown Posse played that shit. Did they? They did. Oh wow.
02:18:53
Speaker
And they got paid a fuck ton of money to do it, man. Oh shit. I had no idea. Well, I mean, it makes sense there. That genre was sort of new. And so there's only so many that are in that like.
02:19:08
Speaker
Crazy, weird, alternative rock, insane stuff kind of thing. Well, not to mention that entire festival was just like angry white people music. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's like corn, limp biscuit, rage against the machine, Metallica, insane grand posse, mega death kid rock. Yeah. Just pissed off white folks. Yeah. The Agro vibes are dripping.
02:19:35
Speaker
filled with a bunch of people who have a bunch of money, but couldn't buy things because they required you to turn cash into weird festival tokens that had long ass lines. Well, also, also the fact that they were like, oh, looks like people want water. Did we say four bucks? We meant eight bucks. Yeah. It's like, shit, eight bucks for a water? Well, beer is only six bucks, so I guess I'll get beer.
02:20:05
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we're getting close to that at theme parks. I mean, I wouldn't think it's a stretch to say that Woodstock 99 is like a,
02:20:22
Speaker
like a blueprint for city businesses that have captive audiences. But the good thing about Woodstock though is that I think now music festivals standards is to have water refill stations where you bring in like a container and then they have refill stations everywhere. So that's good. I mean, I think that's pretty bare minimum necessity.
02:20:48
Speaker
And I think maybe besides the fire festival, we also figured out a way to like not have people be sleeping in feces. Well, the big problem with music festivals now isn't the fact that they figured out the technology or like we need water stations. The problem is the people still.
02:21:10
Speaker
you know, cause you even, you take into account the fact that the water stations are fixed and you know, whatever else. And you still get fucking Astro world. Or so my faith in humanity, I think is more. Yeah. I think that's the problem is people are shitheads now. And like worse and worse and worse, like
02:21:32
Speaker
I, right. Cause at least Woodstock 99, they had the excuse of fucking $8 water and not having Twitter. Yeah. Well, isn't there, um, there's like a concept of crowd control where they have, um, where they basically have like gates, almost like, like Barry or I guess like barriers to prevent a certain amount of people from being able to like compress together. That's like a thing, right? And they, they even know.
02:22:02
Speaker
for big venues. I mean, yeah, it's like, um, they, they like, they like gate off like three tiers of the general admission. So that way you can't just like run forward. Yeah. And like this section's full. You need to move to that section. No one else can come into this. If you want to get closer, you have to like go to the outside of the gates, like you have to go to the outside, like the perimeter and then walk back to the center. You can't just like, it's not just like one giant general admission area.
02:22:32
Speaker
And I think that was the problem with the actual world. It's like they didn't have the proper like court or I don't know, whatever you call it, like gates, like protection, like gate barriers. I mean, I think the problem is no matter what you do, people are just fucking stupid. People only care about themselves. And anyone who says that they don't is at some point in their life a liar.
02:22:59
Speaker
Yeah, because even I like, I feel like I'm very selfless most of the time, but still make selfish decisions. Like we were at Fiesta Texas and my kid was having a really good time in the kid section and I saw a wonder woman was sending empty seats. And so I ducked away for like 45 minutes and just rode the ride seven times and then came back. I was like, you guys have fun. I'll be back. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah.
02:23:27
Speaker
Going back to water though. Bad dad alert. Going back to water though, I absolutely hate how parks will turn off their water fountains, but then it's like they refuse, they don't allow you to bring in water. Then they turn off their water fountains and then they only sell Dasani, which isn't really water, it's salt water. That's so you buy more Dasani.
02:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, that we went a very long time as a country with water fountains or for some reason every other water fountain turned off for COVID.
02:24:07
Speaker
Yeah. And places are still using it as an excuse. I think,
Travel Deals and Regional Attractions
02:24:12
Speaker
yeah, I feel like now, I mean, I was talking about this with my father today, which random topics, but he was saying that there are certain companies that just have not come out of COVID and are still using it as an excuse and their operations are not nearly as good as they used to be. And he thinks we're going to get to a point where the public's like, fuck it. I'm not using that anymore. It doesn't work.
02:24:34
Speaker
Like the example he was giving was Southwest airlines. Like they had their giant meltdown at Christmas. Like they're still not great. They're canceling flights and all of this kind of stuff. Like they've got pilots going on strike and it's just, they have not recovered from COVID problems. And.
02:24:53
Speaker
It's not good. Yeah. Oh, really, uh, relevant. Very, very brief. I saw that frontier airlines is having a, they're, they're selling an unlimited flight pass for summer for three 99. So yeah, it's an interesting idea. If you don't care about it'll work for me. If you don't care about getting it to your destination on time or the same day or week, it's perfect. Yeah. Or otherwise you don't actually care what your destination is. Yeah.
02:25:23
Speaker
Right? Like you had to MCO and you're like, all right, I am going to go to Wichita, Kansas today because that has a flight that I can get a seat on. And you're like, yeah, I'm going to go back home. Well, I've never been to Kansas. It's one of 11 states I haven't been to. So it's on my list. I'll tell you what, Kansas, I've been there. I've been to Kansas City, Kansas to ride the fucking kitty coaster at the mall. But.
02:25:50
Speaker
Kansas, you want my attention, you want me to come back, fucking legalize, then we'll talk. Or I don't know, build some crazy water slide that might kill a kid either way. Then I'll, then I'll think about it. Um, you know, Kansas is pretty close to Missouri and the city museum is adding a new ride to their roof. Yeah. I saw that. The, uh,
02:26:17
Speaker
I need to fucking check the roof out. I wouldn't during winter and it wasn't open. I need to go back and when it's open, cause what do they have up there? They got a Ferris wheel and what else? There's like a school bus you can climb in that protrudes out over the building. That's right. So the, um, I've never been, it sounds like a wild place, but I haven't really been to St. Louis besides I went as a kid and then I went in passing on my way to duty silver dollar city.
02:26:47
Speaker
So like next time you're gonna go to Six Flags St. Louis, just stop in St. Louis and just don't go to St. Louis. I love Six Flags St. Louis. It's one of my favorite Six Flags parks. It is. It's charming. I've always enjoyed going there. It's pretty nice other than the fucking confusing ass layout.
02:27:06
Speaker
But that's kind of why I like it's layout because it's built like a, a charming old park and like, doesn't feel like a six flags to me. And it's got like great wooden roller coasters and it's hilly. It's got trees, like a big fan. I, they, um, do you know, do they sell their enterprise? Uh, being that six flags closed a bunch of rides, I doubt it.
02:27:33
Speaker
I don't know for sure though. I couldn't tell you because I think that was, um, one of the only, like, as far as the Schwarzkopf enterprises, I know grand America had one and then St. Louis had one. I don't know where the, where that other other one was. Oh, Georgia over Georgia. It's that fun spot America now. Shit. That's right. It's in Orlando and it's still got six legs over Georgia plates inside of it with their ride restriction warnings on it.
02:28:00
Speaker
Hey, not gonna lie, if I'm not mistaken, based off of some video I saw earlier today, California's Great America still has their original enterprise. Is it a Schwarzkopf?
02:28:12
Speaker
if it's still the same original, which I believe it is because it's in the original Orleans place location there. Okay. Nice. Dude, those ones were the best ones because they had, for some reason, like the swinging on them was like so much more, like the swinging was so much more free swinging.
02:28:33
Speaker
So we used to do this thing where if you sat like you scooted forward as far as possible and then you like grab onto the front bar and lean forward, you swing like way crazier. I don't know. There's something about it.
02:28:51
Speaker
I had a friend who was a mechanic at Great America. And, uh, for a long time, there was this picture he had out of this profile pic of him standing underneath the main bar on there. Like that raises up the whole arm. Like while
Ride Mechanics and Safety Stories
02:29:09
Speaker
I was running. Yeah. Like it's up in the up position. He's just like standing under it. Oh shit. Nice.
02:29:18
Speaker
Uh, good old days before lockout tag out. Well, he was a mechanic, so I don't know if all of that would still apply. Also, I heard it's a valid point. I heard those short scoff ones. If you hit the east stop, the, the, the arm just free falls down and it slams into the ground. I think that's correct. Well, your, your goose ones just stop in the position they're at. And then the person in the cage goes flying into the cage. Ooh.
02:29:49
Speaker
That seems a lot worse. For those of you playing at home, flat rides, you generally don't stop. You cycle, stop them and bring them back to the home position. And he stops like an absolute out of case or a out of this world crazy emergency where you're like parts are flying off or something. And you think the answer is to stop all ride motion. But like, like your pendulum rides, you stop those and then they just cut power and free spin until gravity finally brings them
02:30:14
Speaker
into the, uh, into the, into the station. So like, it's like a half an hour of just like with no power. So never you stop a ride, never flat ride, uh, cycle, stop it unless it's like an absolute emergency. We had, um, that was on skyscrapers too. You're not supposed to, you stop them because if you do, it'll like, it can cause concussions and like neck sprains and stuff, uh, sprain knees.
02:30:40
Speaker
Because the brake is so intense that it's not a smooth brake. It's jerky. So what happens is because the arms are so long, it has that kind of snappy slingshot effect. I'm only saying this because I accidentally did it once. And it almost- How did that turn out? It was with employees, so it doesn't matter.
02:31:10
Speaker
That is a 100% truth statement. Like I did it, I did it as a joke. So the thing is like, obviously when you run the ride in the morning, you do all the different tasks you do, like you stop tests, ride, stop, all that stuff. But like, I wanted to see what it would do when it was full of people.
02:31:26
Speaker
So suddenly I hit the E-stop and then I just see the two people that were on it as they come, you know, they're swinging down to the low position and their heads were just like slamming onto the back of the seat. Their legs were like flying straight up. Oh, that ride was so fun. And then sure enough, like a week later, we had to take the ride down for a few weeks because it had some structural issues.
02:32:04
Speaker
because it was really cool. They actually fill the entire structure up with compressed air and there's a little PSI reader that's on the end of each gondola. So it should be, it was between like 15 and 20 PSI. So if the PSI ever dropped, you know, you had some kind of like structural issue or like, you know, fracture or whatever. So. So you broke it. Yeah. Good, good job.
02:32:33
Speaker
It was also all right. Uh, twice the, it also was twice the, um, or what would you call it? Double, it was double past the operating hour lifecycle. So the solution was they just, they like broke the, the like cycle counter on the panel. So it was like stuck at a certain number and it was like double pass its lifetime. So it was still a fun ride.
02:33:03
Speaker
Especially if you like hooked your leg. Oh yeah. Yeah, of course. And that just prevented it from rotating. Yeah. So you would wrap your legs around. So it would, so if you're at the top, you're right side up, but when you come into the platform, you're upside down. So you're pulling like negative three G's. I still feel like I have a weird eye issue. Like where my eye feels like it's bulging out, like migraines because of that.
02:33:33
Speaker
but it was really fun. It was really fun. Yeah. See, this is, what's weird is like Ben and I haven't technically met, but I'm sure we've interacted because, um, I had friends on the skyscraper or skyscraper ripcord team. And so I would ride them fairly frequently. Yeah. What years did you work there?
02:33:56
Speaker
Uh, nine, 10, 11, and 13. And I pretty much wrote it all the time in 2010. Okay. Yeah. That's, that's when I was there. That's so funny. Yeah. Like the, uh, the ripcord skyscraper team would be at my apartment a lot having parties. So if you were ever at an offsite apartment party, that was at my apartment. And, um, I don't think I ever went to anything offsite unless you guys ever went to crowbar.
02:34:25
Speaker
No, I never went to crowbar. Um, no, but heard good things. There's also, um, Sean Flaherty is going to upload some video where you guys are talking to each other. Probably. It was just be in the background and be like, Holy shit, there's drew and Ben.
02:34:50
Speaker
You know what? Here's the other thing
Cedar Point Work and Living Experiences
02:34:52
Speaker
too is like, I think you're right. Like, because I remember, like I remember it drew like it's the name is in my, my memory, right? Like some members of your crew would hang out with Magnum. Yeah. Yeah. And I was always hanging out with the Magnum team. Yeah. Early, early 2010, um, we became friends with some of the Magnum crew because we would always call them on the phone.
02:35:20
Speaker
and like prank call them. So back then, like the big joke was like, you call and be like, yeah, it's either there eat a dick, you know, hang up, whatever. Um, but we'd have what like, we were friends with them. So they, whenever they would do like the, you know, like row car, like four and five chain off when the park was slow, like they would just let us sit in the empty seats and rewrite a bunch of times. It was awesome. An exchange. I was definitely a car five rider a lot too.
02:35:49
Speaker
And then we would just fly them every once in a while. That's how I would write a lot was I would just go with the Magnum people and get to a skyscraper. Cause I worked, I worked shoot the rapids. So my first month and a half, I was just bouncing between odd jobs that the park had. So like,
02:36:07
Speaker
One day they had us pick fish off the beach and we were taking all the dead fish, putting in trash bags and throwing them away. Um, another day I was like decob webbing the fence. And so all I would do is just go ride things because nobody, I had no supervision whatsoever. Oh, the worst was decob webbing the pump rooms.
02:36:28
Speaker
I don't know if you ever had to do that. We had to do this thing called pool open. We had to show up to the beach at 7am and basically clean. We'd have to hose off all the hotel pool benches or chairs and then cobweb fence, pick up dead fish.
02:36:47
Speaker
And so like if they said to do community service a pretty much once a week and then like you'd go to the, you'd go and get the breakfast special after and take a nap before you're right open. But yeah, the, uh, the breakfast special was pretty solid. But what's funny is like, it's not even anything that it wasn't even that great. It was just what scrambled eggs on a toast sandwich with hash browns that would melt the styrofoam plate.
02:37:16
Speaker
You like pick that sandwich off. It was like a melted imprint of the sandwich. Yeah, it was like 225. You guys are going to say like a cup of coffee with some cigarette ashes and not that bad. No, but like a cup of coffee and a smoking section was not unheard of for ride hosts to start their day that way. I got really new risk from the
02:37:48
Speaker
Well, because the, um, there was a soda machine inside of breakers that was by the breaker smoking section between the cafeteria and challenge park. And, uh, every like three times you'd order a brisket to get two of them. So like, I dunno, this is a good hangover drink. The, um,
02:38:10
Speaker
vending machine, uh, back by mean streak, uh, in frontier town, it was the exact same thing, but it was the Mountain Dew where every one, every couple of times you got two mountain dues. I think I remember that one and it was only a dollar, right? Yeah. Do you also remember I'll or, um, the, the smoothies in that break area?
02:38:38
Speaker
That was the one. It was like the one. So you could, obviously there was a cafeteria, but in that mean streak breaker, there was also like a mini cafeteria where you could order food. Yeah. But they had the smoothies. It was like, or like the, it was basically like an icy, like a strawberry icy. Yeah. Um, but for some reason, the mean streak one day it was a bigger cup and it was like three bucks or something. So I'd always go there for that. Oh, the good old days.
02:39:06
Speaker
but you never worked to the park under we met. Uh, we met dropped all of the pricing on all of employee food and whatnot. So does went to a quarter, uh, cheeseburgers or a dollar and like the prices on everything got completely cut. Yeah, that was cool. I did do, I did do like three weekends in 2012, um, as like a scare actor. So I got to experience the cafeteria then I felt so ripped off. Like I was so pissed. Like when I went in there and saw how cheap everything was,
02:39:35
Speaker
Oh yeah. I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Plus that was when they got like an extra dollar per hour. How are we getting bonus? I don't know if I should regret not ever having gone to work at Cedar Point or just like, man, I dodged a bullet. I, I, I think anyone who likes roller coasters and didn't work at Cedar Point for a summer missed out in my opinion.
02:39:59
Speaker
But you also worked at great America. I did not. You could have had very easily been a similar experience that you then got to go home and sleep in a much more comfortable bed. So that's also plausible. The thing is, is that like the experience overall, like, or I guess like it's one of those experiences where in the moment it sucks, but afterwards the memories make up for how much misery there was. And so it's like a positive thing.
02:40:29
Speaker
I don't know. I think it was a perfect experience for three months and that's like all you need. Yeah. Well, let's go get an apartment in Sandusky and go do three months then. That's significantly cheaper than an apartment in Orlando. Yeah. And you know, Cedar Point wages might actually pay for it. Yeah. Well, I mean, 2020 they were going, there was a 2021 that they went to $20 an hour.
02:40:58
Speaker
And then the following year they dropped down to 15 cause they were like, now we can get internationals again. Yep. And apparently when they were doing that, they were like scheduling people like max 20 hours. Yeah. Well, so Ben, you might find this interesting. Cedar Point is a scheduling software now that requires a certain amount of hours between shifts. So you can't open to close anymore and then working open to close the next day. Okay.
02:41:27
Speaker
which it like requires 10 hours of off time between your next shift starting. See, like that's obviously good, but when, I don't know, that's kind of part of the experience. Yeah. Like I, I don't know. I understand employee. I understand workers rights, but like you gotta make that money.
02:41:47
Speaker
Cause nothing says safety like drunk teenagers working 16 hours and then working an additional 20 hours with four hours in between. No, no, no. See, if you were drunk, you opened entrance. You weren't in a seat checking position until you sobered up. Oh, I definitely operated full ripcord positions when I was drunk. No, I was a good boy. I would, I would open entrance.
02:42:18
Speaker
That's good. Safety. Yeah. What else you got for us tonight?
Coaster Community Controversies
02:42:27
Speaker
I don't mean to speed this thing along, but... Well, no, I know. We've been recording for quite a bit. Yes. Well, let's round it out. We got one listener question real quick.
02:42:39
Speaker
And this is from Dave coaster talk, no BS zone. So thanks for sending this in. Dave wants to know what are your top five stupidest things that the coaster influencers have pulled people such as coaster studios and Alvi. Yeah. So I saw this question earlier and I was thinking about it. Um, I don't know. It's a, it's tough if you want my opinion because
02:43:10
Speaker
I think in the loop goes about things significantly different to a lot of enthusiasts. And I think that's why I like tend to join to the in the loop side. And I, but I guess my answer to this question is outrage. Like I feel like
02:43:30
Speaker
most influencers, they won't necessarily say all of them or this could even be fictitious, but in like my opinion of it, I think they love outreach and like creating a bigger deal about everything like breaking or first look or, um, exclusive inside info. And they use these,
02:43:56
Speaker
big, bold, like head catchy things for something that I parked press release got sent out. And so I think that's really silly when people pretend they were the only ones that got to do something that went out to 250 people. I agree. Yeah. That's kind of just catching that algorithm. It's a, it's just become like, like your passion project then just turns into like how to get more clicks and how to play that YouTube game.
02:44:24
Speaker
that and like this is more broadly a problem with society in general but victimhood mentality and again this is a broad problem not but you know it is also it's a macrocosm right so however I did think of a specific one that's kind of funny and that's uh west coast bash 2009 six flags magic mountain
02:44:55
Speaker
hosted by Theme Park Review. Ben and I were in attendance with a buddy of ours. And we went to go to the park presentation or whatever was going on in the theater. So we walk in with our buddy and Alvy like knows him.
02:45:16
Speaker
And there's some bad blood there for whatever reason. He had an opinion or something. So Alvi walks right up to the three of us with an employee from the park and he's like, that guy, that guy, and that guy. And the employee like, he's like, Hey guys, sorry, this is a private event. So like, you're gonna have to leave. We had to leave the theater. We didn't have to leave the park. We were fine to stay in the park. But you were at the event that one of your perks of the event was this presentation.
02:45:47
Speaker
So it was a weird thing. Basically, like they did the event, right? And Alvi was selling tickets, but Six Flags Magic Mountain also sold tickets to the event for a period. So our friend grabbed the tickets through Six Flags, not through Alvi. So we had tickets for the event fair and square. Well, they were, they were refunded.
02:46:17
Speaker
Right. Our buddy had to go to guest services and he had he went back behind the counter and talked with them for like an hour or two. And like, you know, he comes back out and he's like, all right, yeah, they give our money back. We can we can hang in the park, but we can't do the ERT or anything. Oh. Yeah.
02:46:43
Speaker
So I think that one was pretty. It's just a weird story, you know? Yeah. This is a weird story. Just just having him because like. I don't know, I didn't really know the guy. I don't think you did either, right, Ben? No, not really. Talk to him online a couple of times, maybe, so it was weird to have him come up in Acosta.
02:47:10
Speaker
Like, I don't know, man, I'm just here with my friend. We're just trying to ride some rides.
Social Media's Impact on Interactions
02:47:16
Speaker
Yeah. But all right. Ben, do you have any you could think of? I guess it's all related. Just make it sensationalizing non-sensational things for clicks. Generating drama out of nothing.
02:47:39
Speaker
trying to get people to click on you. That's all hot takes for hot takes sake. Like they're not really believing things, but like outlandish statements. Yeah. Yeah. I think it all really just boils down to, you know, people's attitudes more than particular people.
02:48:01
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I guess the problem is there's the dream now of like just making content on the internet and getting to do your hobby for a job. And like, I guess a lot of people want to do that because they think it's, I don't know, minimal work or something. I don't necessarily know the answer to that, but so you've got all these people that want these, these roles and they're excited about the, or they want to people to do this YouTube channeling. So now it's like competitive too. So like,
02:48:30
Speaker
What used to be, everyone was friendly going to parks. Now, like everyone is friendly, but like there's competition because we quantify everything. Like we quantify likes on Instagram. So like you, you're taking a picture of the voyage with all 300 other people at Hollywood nights, be like, Hmm, I got 27 likes. This asshole got a slightly worse picture and he got, uh, 475 likes. Like, why is my life so unfair?
02:49:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think the like button is single handedly the worst thing that has ever happened to society. I think there's a fair argument to be made for that because it now quantifies anything you do on the internet. Right? Like is there a purpose to this? Like I posted this and nobody responded. Like am I all alone? Does nobody agree to me? Like now you're thinking deep like that one or like you. So you tend to be like, well, this is successful for me in my own like,
02:49:31
Speaker
brand that is just my first and last name. Like not even like anything else. Like you're just normal everyday people now like quantify their reactions with people. Hey, you didn't like my status. Was there something wrong with it? Yeah. You know, you got a good point. So it's easier to just not pay attention to social media.
02:49:57
Speaker
Yeah, I'm pretty much solidly only on Twitter. Um, everything else, every once in a while I will discover that someone messaged me or something, but I don't necessarily see it, but Twitter I'll log on to a couple of times every day. So send him your hot takes.
02:50:16
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I don't actually care if you have hot takes that you actually believe in. Like Magnum is one of my favorite roller coasters in the world. And like some people like Magnum ironically, or they say they like it because like people really fucking hate Magnum and that's fine. Whatever that's on you. That's not my problem. I love it. I think it's great ride high capacity and never really has a line and it's a lot of fun. So like Magnum's great and a lot of people don't like it. And then.
02:50:43
Speaker
So be it. But like sometimes people say you got some easy ammo if you want to pick a fight with Drew, they think that gets reactions. Although I like stemming this further into like a final thought. And I like to. I think that's part of the splash mountain controversy. I think was because we're all listening. There was like all our like this podcast likes and clicks to be gay or outlandish, ridiculous thoughts when it came to
02:51:13
Speaker
saving Splash Mountain like both directions here and people genuinely started defending a log flume that had a bunch of animatronics that never worked correctly anyway like if I can fix them and then we're gonna fix them why not put a new theme on it like
Podcasting Habits and Listener Engagement
02:51:32
Speaker
We don't need the same rides for 80 years. Like that's not a thing that needs to be done. And yet people lost their damn mind calling us the craziest ride closure ever. Yeah, I've got nothing. My audio is kind of messed up and you're coming through my computer speakers and not my headphones. Oh, well, we're going to wrap it up. So thank you for being here, Drew. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can't click on settings either. I don't know what's going on here.
02:52:02
Speaker
But yeah, thanks for having me on the show, guys. I don't know if this part's going to make it or if my audio is even good enough to make it. I don't know if you can even hear me. We can hear you. So I think it's all good. OK, it's the wrong microphone. I'm on my computer microphone. Like when I type in stuff. You can really hear it. I think. Can you? No, you're fine. OK.
02:52:30
Speaker
Well, thanks. Thanks for coming on. Oh yeah. It finally worked out. This is ninth time's a try. Hey, at least if it's going to be a two year break, at least we can get a nice three hour podcast out of here. That's kind of the rule of thumb. Whenever I show up to a podcast, it becomes like a three hour marathon. Hey, I'm not complaining. We've just dropped another consecutive three hour podcast two weeks in a row.
02:52:58
Speaker
Yeah. In my head, people listen to podcasts when they're doing tasks that they want to listen to someone talk to them. The length doesn't really matter because it's not like most people listen to podcasts live, like some do, but like me, I'm always in my car when I do it because I'm always sitting in Orlando traffic. My podcast listening is my commute to and from work all the time. Sometimes they take a couple of days when they're nice and long and I think that's great.
02:53:25
Speaker
Well, hopefully our listeners feel that way about this episode. If they don't, it's because of us, not you. If you didn't enjoy this episode, you can tweet me at Drew the Intern on Twitter. Thanks for taking the heat for this one, Drew. Yeah, this is my fault. Well, I guess we'll get the plug-in for sure. Check out In The Loop, YouTube, and podcast.
02:53:57
Speaker
Speaking of influence culture, although it just is ending, we're in our last round of bonuses because Facebook and Instagram have changed their rulings here, and they're going back to the drawing boards. But there was this real bonus for reels on Facebook and Instagram. So the team's been getting pretty creative and doing reels on Insta, if you want to check that out. And we have a reel on Facebook that has 30 million views, which is just wild.
02:54:17
Speaker
Yeah, and also something...
02:54:25
Speaker
So yeah, check out all that stuff too in the loop podcast Damn. Yeah, we'll go go get check them out. Give them a play and then myself. I'm on Twitter at drew the intern Follow him so untapped at drew the intern if anyone's into untapped Got the beer credits. Yeah We'll go give them follow Tweet angry things you're nice things or whatever And you can follow us on the socials
02:54:54
Speaker
But if I just, I say just don't even do social media. Avoid it. Enjoy podcasts. Maybe try out Discord. I don't know. We have a cool one. Check out See the Carousel. The History of Great America. Episode one is live right now, the day you're listening to this. And it's also available on our Your Favorite Coaster Sucks feed. So check it out after you play this one. If you really want to hear more of me,
02:55:24
Speaker
Um, come to our great America meetup. Both of them. June, September, be there. Smoke a square. I don't know. Ben, you got anything else, man? Drew, you got anything else? No, just good talking to you guys. Um, it's not very often you talk to a fellow Cedar Point alumni of having similar stories of similar timelines there and like don't actually know each other. I know that's wild, but like,
02:55:55
Speaker
At the same time, like whenever we meet in person, it might change. That's just sometimes how it goes. Yeah. And like you were also saying you were, I think if I remember correctly from two years ago, you were fat then and you're not now and I'm the opposite. I'm now fat and I wasn't fat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I really don't look anything like I did when I worked there. So.
02:56:22
Speaker
Yeah, Ben was once described by looking like a truck. I at point, one point was a pretty boy who worked for Abercrombie and Fitch. So like that is not my lifestyle now. Wow.
02:56:34
Speaker
Where can I find, do you have a photo from 2010 or 2011 in like uniform anywhere? Uh, I have a few Facebook profile pictures. If you, I don't know if we're friends, but, um, you can scroll like way back in life and you can see me in like a sweep uniform and me in a, on the Maverick platform in 2009 in a uniform.
02:57:04
Speaker
All right. I'll take a look. Awesome. All right. Well, Drew, you know how we wrap this up, right? Yeah. Cool. Cool. Well, thanks a bunch for being here. Thank you all for listening. And until next time, your favorite.