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Episode 155 - Scream Park w/ Sean Flaharty
48 Plays8 months ago
This week on the premier comedy roller coaster podcast, Ben and Zach are joined by Sean Flaharty to talk about Top Thrill 2 at Cedar Point, Sean's upcoming trip to Japan and to give commentary on the 2000 Discovery Channel documentary "Scream Park."
Find Sean Flaharty on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@SeanFlaharty
Actually, we're the worst roller coaster podcast!
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Transcript
DJ Antics and Introductions
00:00:41
Speaker
I'm Zach and I'm officially a better DJ than Grimes. I'm Ben and I'm. I'm not Grimes. And I'm Sean, I'm neither a DJ nor Grimes, but I am Carlos of yesterday. Oh. It'd be worth like to hear that. It's hey, I'm here so that yeah, I'm good. Go.
00:01:11
Speaker
What's it? Uh, join Sean's Patreon or? I don't have any of that. Subscribe to his YouTube plus. Oh geez. That's why I have insurance. Well, we're glad you're all right. Many thanks. Thanks. This is a, thanks for inviting me on. This is going to be fun and raise my spirits a bit. So it's all good.
00:01:39
Speaker
Hey, the powers that be knew that we were going to ask you to be here tonight. Oh, so I can blame you for the accident then. No. Yes. OK. There you go. OK. Fair enough. Your favorite coaster sucks causes a lot of problems. Yeah. You could have just sent me an email would have been a little easier. All right. Next time I won't rely on cosmic communication.
Eclipse Excitement and Animal Instincts
00:02:03
Speaker
OK. Do as you please.
00:02:07
Speaker
I don't know if you saw the eclipse. That was the first heads up. Oh yeah. I was in New Mexico and got to see like a, I don't know, 50% eclipse took like an hour and a half too.
00:02:20
Speaker
was Ohio, Ohio is totality or whatever. Yep. I was getting, I was getting so many calls from friends and family just going, dude, like, can you, can you believe this? Can you like believe this, you know? And, uh, I'm, I'm just like, well, yeah, I can believe it. Cause it's not happening where I'm at. Oh my gosh. My cat. Sorry. If you can hear that.
00:02:45
Speaker
Your cat's just being needy. I know how it is. I got a needy cat too. No, she knows that something's off with me. She knows I'm, you know, not feeling the best. So yeah, it's the animals pick up on that stuff somehow. And anytime like you're sick or stuff, they, they like to be extra, you know, close to you and stuff like that. And that's what she's just doing that, or she wants to go outside and I'm not letting her out. It's warm as hell here in Ohio.
00:03:12
Speaker
Well, that's, you know, could be worse, right? Yeah. Mm hmm. You got that. But yeah.
00:03:23
Speaker
Shit, we were covering quite a bit before we started rolling tonight. We sure did. With that said, real quick, let's get the plug in.
Ancestry Surprises and Skepticism
00:03:35
Speaker
Sean is on YouTube, so you should definitely go check out Sean's YouTube channel.
00:03:42
Speaker
That's all I have. This is just Sean Flaherty? Yep. S-E-A-N-F-L-A-H-A-R-T-Y and it's very Irish name, but I found out this week. I got my ancestry test back or sampled back and I have 8% Irish in me. I'm not mainly Irish. I'm mainly English. Go figure. Huh.
00:04:07
Speaker
What's what is it? How does it break it down? Like what were you like? Was it mo like, is it by percentages? All of them? Yeah. Yeah. At least the, the stuff that, I mean, I just, I didn't have time to like kind of go into everything, but it said I was like, what'd it say? 40% English. And then.
00:04:27
Speaker
I think it was 20% Northwest European like Belgium France area that area And then it was 20% Scotland Scottish 20% Irish and then it broke down past that Yeah, it only took a couple weeks to get the results but I had a discount for one of those kits and I was like, you know what? I want to try it. What the heck? I
00:04:52
Speaker
And you know, my brother had done his and all that, but yeah, it was, it's pretty interesting. It breaks it down in more detail than what I was able to kind of look into though. Here's my biggest question I got right now. You said your brother did one. Did yours come out the same?
00:05:11
Speaker
No, not entirely. I think he had less Irish in him and like slightly more like Scandinavian or something. I'll have to ask him again. He told me over the phone, he had his done for a couple of years, so I'm just not remembering everything he told me. But yeah, I mean, growing up, we were all always told that we had a lot of Irish in us and that's not the case, according to this.
00:05:43
Speaker
So I'd be curious to try one of those, but I'm also like really tentative to just like send my DNA to some company. Yeah. I was kind of concerned about it too, but then I, I, I, I'm not getting any younger. So, I mean, what the hell, you know, I don't care. Yeah. No, I mean, that's, that's, Hey, point counterpoint, right? That's yeah.
00:06:12
Speaker
Oh, that is saying he lost audio somehow.
Japan Trip Planning and Travel Tales
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's what he's saying. Um, well, uh, uh, hold on. We're going to emergency fix this live on the air. I wonder if like his batteries in his head, earbuds died or something.
00:06:39
Speaker
Um, I'm going to hit play. Well, no, no, I don't want to do that. So, um, Sean, you said you're heading back to Japan soon. I am in June. I can't wait.
00:06:54
Speaker
That's exciting. Yeah, I'm going with three other people that the three people that have never been there, just like when I went in 2019, nobody other than myself had been there. So that's exciting for me because I'll be just literally literally feeding off their energy and it'll feel like, you know, my first time there as well.
00:07:12
Speaker
But I'm comfortable enough going around the country, you know, by myself and stuff. But for people that have never been there, it can be intimidating because it's just so active and everything is just always on. But give yourself two days to understand their train system and you'll be
00:07:29
Speaker
Uh, you'll be gold. It's pretty easy, especially now with, uh, Google maps and translate and all that. You can get around very easily and I can't wait. Yeah. So here's a question like having lived in Chicago for basically the past decade, you utilizing the subway system here, the, uh, obviously, uh, for the better part of that is commuting.
00:07:55
Speaker
How do you think that is an easy transition over to for a vacation? Well, the American transit systems are, I guess you could call them a little bit more rigid.
00:08:11
Speaker
Um, I mean, they, they leave, I see, I live in Ohio and there really isn't anything like in Chicago or New York or any of that stuff. Uh, as far as subways go on, on the level that you guys have them. So I'm not as familiar with them. I mean, I've taken them before, but, um, in Japan, you can set literally your watch to the time they leave and they show up. Um, if you miss a train, it's because of your fault. Not there, not that they left early. And it's just, um, it's very fast, very efficient.
00:08:40
Speaker
I think there's a lot more stops in the American cities, obviously, and stuff like that. But they do have local trains in Japan that stop every stop and all that. But it's such a quick process that when you get back to the States and you take any form of transportation frequently, a lot of Americans, myself included, just look around and say, why aren't we doing it this way? Why aren't we doing it this way?
00:09:09
Speaker
Yeah. And I certainly wouldn't, uh, say Chicago has, you know, there's anything timely about the transit systems here, but no, I gotcha. But you have them. They work. Yes. Yeah. You got to buffer in some extra time for sure. But yeah, if you're looking to get from A to B, you can generally do so.
Technical Glitches and Memories of Rides
00:09:33
Speaker
Now, do you take them frequently? Yeah, that's been, I mean,
00:09:39
Speaker
pretty much the entire about decade I've lived in Chicago. That's been more or less my car or my main form of commuting at least. Okay. Wow. So you live like in Chicago. Yeah, definitely. Gotcha. Okay. That's, that's awesome. It's so weird because I live like, I think four miles from downtown Columbus and I live in Columbus, but I'm kind of considered the suburbs.
00:10:08
Speaker
It's probably like the city limits are pretty small then, right? Yeah. I mean, I have a different mailing address than where I live. So it's like my mailing address is for one city and it's not Columbus, but my taxes and everything are Columbus. I'm about as north as you could possibly get. Well, how do I say this?
00:10:33
Speaker
North is possibly get to have like a Grove City mailing address, but south enough that it's still considered Columbus. It's like this really fine line. So like when the streets get plowed, my neighborhood rarely gets it because there's just this blurred line that they kind of forget about. Oh, the forgotten zone. Yep.
00:10:59
Speaker
Did we get them back? I'm on, I'm using my phone while my computer restarts for some reason, the sound card crashed. So I'm just rebooting. Okay. Technically yes. Okay. There you go. If it's still recording, it should, it should be able to pick up when I come in and out, right? Yeah. I'm pretty sure we got you here. All right.
00:11:28
Speaker
If not, then, you know, Pucci you had to step away from. Yeah. You don't have the, the watch together thing. Oh, that's cause you're okay. I get, nevermind. You're not on your computer. Got it. So I got to ask Sean, uh, how are you handling the loss of dota donpa?
00:11:51
Speaker
I'm really bummed, but at the same, so when I was there in 2019, it was my first time writing it like the more intense launch and with the loop and all that stuff. And I loved it. It was still my favorite coaster. But then even when I was there in 2019, I was under the age of 50 and now I'm over the age of 50 and they had a age requirement that you couldn't, you couldn't write it if you were over the age of 50. Well,
00:12:19
Speaker
I was told right before they made the decision to close it for good. They were raising that up to like 60 plus So then it gave me hope because when I left 2019 I thought well I'm not gonna be able to ride this again and then they ended up saying they're removing it or whatever and I don't know if there'll be anything as intense built again. It's just You almost felt bad after you wrote it
00:12:46
Speaker
You know, it's the only coast I've ever ridden that has provided that sensation to me and I've done it four times. So you said it was a more intense launch the second time? Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. So when I wrote it in 2005, um, when it had the tower, the launch was zero to a hundred and I think it was six and 1.8 seconds. And then they got different, they got, they did something to the trains where they, um,
00:13:14
Speaker
They got shoulder restraints, but they're like vest restraints and it made the trains lighter or something. And they use the same launch, but it goes zero to 112 and 1.5 now.
00:13:27
Speaker
So, um, it's the only coaster that I genuinely like two seconds before that launch want to leave the ride. Like it's, it's so intense. And if you've done it once, you're like, Oh my God, I got to go through this again, but that's why I'm riding it. But it's just, it's just a blur. It does things to your inside that probably shouldn't, it shouldn't do. It moves things around.
00:13:53
Speaker
And there was nothing like it on planet Earth, other than that G-Force thing that was at Old Town before, that shortly lived S&S attraction.
00:14:04
Speaker
Well, apparently it also did things to your spine that it wasn't supposed to do. Yeah. And I, I don't know this for a fact. I haven't read any reports or anything on what, why it happened, but my guess is because of the transition from the old track to where the loop is, there is this terrible, terrible transition. And, and, and Ben, it was just as brutal as the one that's at the bottom of that drop of the, um,
00:14:30
Speaker
Shell razor coaster or whatever it's called. Oh shit. Yeah It reminded me of that like it was like the launch you have so much adrenaline But if you've not ridden it before you don't you're not prepared for that jolt But then when you write it again, and you do the launch you're just like oh here it comes here It comes here it comes here it comes so that's I don't know that for a fact But that's where my guess is I don't think it would be because of the launch and
00:14:56
Speaker
because you really can't move your head forward or your body forward because of those vest restraints. They're the most comfortable trains I've ever sat in. Those trains, even with the vest restraints. Wild. Yeah, but I don't know, man. That was a big reason for me to go to that park to begin with and now that it's not there. I mean, they have other great rides, but
00:15:22
Speaker
I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of Egenyka and, and, and, uh, or Fujiyama, but they have other stuff there. It's really fun. So what parks are you planning on hitting? Um, mainly a lot, a lot of the ones that, um, I did before, um,
00:15:38
Speaker
the guys that are planning the trip i'm letting them plan where they want to go and i'm just chiming in for logistics and stuff like that but um i honestly don't know other than looking at a spreadsheet what's going to happen when we're there i haven't counted um how many new credits i'm getting i'll probably only get like five or ten to be honest but i go there mainly for the country and the amusement parks is just like the bonus you know uh-oh do we lose our youtube thing
00:16:08
Speaker
Oh wait, you're moving stuff around, aren't you? No, it should be there. Okay. Huh. There it goes. Okay. Um, are you doing Disney at all when you're there?
00:16:22
Speaker
Yes. Uh, we're doing both parks. Um, Disney sea is my favorite park in the world and it's just an incredible experience. Um, I know we're doing Disney land that feels very similar to California's. Um, but you know, beauty and the beast and stuff like that will be new to me. Um,
00:16:43
Speaker
I'm sure we're hitting you know, you have to be flexible when you go to japan because Schedules are so weird and everything. Um, if you want to go one day to this park, it might not be open So you have to come back a different day So I I don't think i'm hitting any new to me parks on the trip, but I I like to be surprised so I haven't really looked at what's new or any of that stuff I just go in completely blind and it gives me a um
00:17:08
Speaker
You know a better sense of being surprised when I finally get on something before it, you know, I don't need to know everything about it So there's a lot of stuff of the trip. I don't know about yet But flights are booked rooms are booked We're gonna do this. It'll be a three-week trip trip and I'll be doing another series and I'll be Looking forward to that because I love doing those Hey, uh
00:17:32
Speaker
If I can like Venmo you or something, can you bring back some Disney souvenirs for me? Yeah, I got you covered. Yeah, you just I can probably like FaceTime you while I'm there. We had to figure out a time because it'll be late for you and then go in the gift shop and pick up stuff. But from what I remember,
00:17:53
Speaker
It's weird that a lot of the music parks don't have like great merch like we do here. Like there was only one shirt for Hakugei. Um, and it was just a little, little logo for the 50th anniversary anniversary of the park with a white whale on it. That was it. Unless you wanted like a plush toy or something, but, um, they they're big onto like cookies and ramen. You know, they want you to take those home. Yeah.
00:18:22
Speaker
Not even just like they a lot of the parks have like mascots like funny cartoon characters and they'll have like cookies that are shaped to them or they'll have all kinds of strange ice cream treats that you know, you have to eat before you get on the train and It's just like it's just completely
00:18:38
Speaker
Strange way of marketing compared to what we're used to like I've only I think both times I've been this fan I think I got Two items of souvenirs and those two trips to take home Mainly because I'm trying to conserve space, but there just wasn't anything that was awesome. I mean Dan had to go to like three different Stores at Fuji Q just to find one large the Dampa shirt or dodo Dampa and
00:19:07
Speaker
Whenever I make it to Japan, I really want to get one of those shirts that has like a really weird broken English saying on it. Like, you know, there's, there's plenty there. Soap is fighting spirit potato. Yes.
00:19:24
Speaker
Well, someone in our group had a shirt that they bought at Fuji Q and wore it at Universal Studios. And everybody kept on pointing at the shirt and laughing. And according to like our Google Translate app, it was like, I think it meant like, we thought it meant like free spirit adrenaline, you know, that. And it turned out, it turns out it meant I'm a lonely soul and can't find anyone.
00:19:54
Speaker
So like all these girls were like, oh, you know, we didn't know until the end of the day what it meant. So they had a shirt for coaster enthusiasts. Yeah, pretty much. But, you know, just, you know, it's no matter how decent your Japanese is or the translation app, there's always going to be, you know, one of my favorite sites I used to
Humorous Mistranslations and Coaster Collectibles
00:20:20
Speaker
go to is this. I don't even know if it exists anymore, but it used to be called English dot com.
00:20:26
Speaker
Oh boy. And you could look in there and see all the bad translations. Like they had this toy in America, it was called Elmo clap your hands. And the translation in Japanese, it was Elmo crap your hands. So they don't, they don't know, you know, they don't know.
00:20:41
Speaker
But I haven't bought a roller coaster shirt. I mean, I bought one from Lost Island to support the park last year, but I don't have a lot of coaster merch that I travel with. So I'm going to be just wearing metal shirts, I think, the entire trip, like Meshuga and, well, even Gochira and stuff like that. And I'm curious to see if the Japanese would be like, oh my gosh, I knew that band.
00:21:10
Speaker
only the cool ones. Yeah. But there are, you know, those bands are really big over there. So that's true. Mr. Heavy Metal, Marty Friedman. That's true. There you go. I also have a Lost Island t-shirt. It's the one for the ride that has the diamond back logo. Oh yeah. Yeah. But it isn't diamond back. Right.
00:21:34
Speaker
Just cause I thought that was the most hilarious thing. Well, I saw, okay. So are you familiar with like the front of the cars on the life and a Canada's wonderland? Yeah. Like this thing. I swear I haven't compared them, but I think that's the same logo that's on that Eurofighter at one of the new Jersey peers that I rode last year. Um, it's the one that replaced the coaster at fell into the ocean. So it's, it's, um, Oh, what's the name of it? Is it hydress or something?
00:22:05
Speaker
Sea scraper. Sea scraper. All right. All right. Jeez. Too soon. Okay. All right. Wow. But, you know, that makes sense though, because they probably just went on Fiverr and they're like, snake graphic. Big. Yeah. And they're like, oops, don't Google big snake and graphic. But yeah, that's exactly what happened though. They're like,
00:22:34
Speaker
art students who will work for 20 bucks. There, you know, Diamondback has those snake graphics and, um, the year it opened, like at the end of the year, like some of the, some of that decal was flying off. And I was writing that with another enthusiast and he caught one of those pieces mid, like mid ride and like taped it to the back of his cell phone.
00:23:00
Speaker
For years there was just this orange piece and everybody was like, what is that? And he's like, it's from the front of the Diamondback car. It flew off and hit me in the face. Like a little sticker, you know. That's hilarious. Cause you know, they probably paid like $6,000 for the sticker wrap for that thing. Oh yeah. It might've not been in the front. It was probably cause that thing had, you know, there's decals all over it, but I know it was this orange piece and he was so proud he had it. And like only coaster people.
00:23:31
Speaker
Remember that time on Raging Bull like a long time ago, I was in like row three and I had that plastic grocery bag and it like, I like let it go. And then like you were in the back row and it just like splattered across your face. Yep.
00:23:59
Speaker
You know, um, uh, when Tommy Faircloth and all of us were doing that 30 hour marathon on the great American screen machine in Georgia in like 2003 or 2004 somewhere around there, um, Tommy was sitting near the front and, or no, he was sitting near the back of the train and he was like, Hey, everybody, they gave us snacks.
00:24:18
Speaker
And he was like, we're hungry. Why don't you guys put pretzels on your hand and just open your hand on the airtime Hill and we'll catch them in airtime. And that's what they did. There was all these floating little pretzels and they were catching them and eating them. That's some coaster people. Shit. I saw Joe Campanella. What's that? It's no longer there. What was the, was it called hurricane at boomers in Florida?
00:24:45
Speaker
Oh, um, yeah, the Danish hurricane. That was a good ass ride. Yeah, it was. Was that an S&S? I think it was an S&S. No, it was Coastal Works. Yeah, it was Coastal Works. It was like one of the two coasters. That sounds right. I was riding that at midnight with a bunch of enthusiasts after a day in IAP, but we drove down there.
00:25:06
Speaker
Joe had his hand up and the wind was blowing a certain way that the flags on the turnaround were like hitting his hand. And he got a, he got part of the flag caught in his wristband for his watch and it pulled it from the pole. So the rest of the, it was the, probably the most I've ever laughed on a ride. It was just, we pull in the station, there's this flag dangling from his wrist and he was like, I did not grab that. That was like one in a lifetime chance. And the staff was all laughing, but it was hilarious.
00:25:38
Speaker
I was going to say there's there was nobody there when I went there. So I got to imagine that there that. Yeah, it's like.
00:25:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it was, it was strange. We, we met the owner of the park at IAPA that day. Um, Keith was with us to Keith McVean and, and he was like, Hey, do you want to drive four hours? The owner gave us tickets to go ride the coaster, but we, and I was like, well, I have an early morning the next day at IAPA because I was helping run the show, uh, with ACE back then. And the,
00:26:10
Speaker
We're like, let's do it. So we hopped in a minivan, drove, I don't know, three, four hours, rode the coaster for probably an hour and then drove back that same night and had to be at the show early in the next morning. But it was worth it. It was a lot of fun, man. Yeah, that was a good ass ride. I got to go, uh,
00:26:34
Speaker
Cause my grandmother lived there near there before she passed. So one time when I was visiting, I was like, I gotta go ride this coast here cause it's like right there. But yeah, I just remember that nobody was there. I felt like there wasn't even a ride operator there. Just like,
00:26:54
Speaker
Yeah, it was really strange. It was like Jay's amusement. You had to stay in front of the ride and be like, hello. And then somebody would come and get it. Open it up for you. Yeah. Ring a bell. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Oh, wait. You mentioned something earlier about a G-force ride in Florida. Mm-hmm. What was that? It was located pretty much where, um,
00:27:19
Speaker
mind-blower is at Old Town Kissimmee. And it was two, just, it was two tracks about, I don't know, maybe 500 feet long. And they had dragster cars on each track. And then it was, it was reaction based. So it was just, it was Didampa's launch. Just, it was straight into brakes. There was no hills. It was just completely straight right into brakes. And whoever had the fastest acceleration time, like whoever hit the gas pedal first,
00:27:47
Speaker
got a boost, so you would hit 112 in that in that time that the dota Dampa did as well. I have a reverse POV and some off right of it on my channel someplace. I remember seeing that in like an old Rob Alvey video.
00:28:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, at IAPA that year is when they like debuted it and they gave us like a ton of like, like the wristband that ride it a whole bunch of times. And I had not ridden the Dampa yet prior to that, but I rode the first time I rode it, I rode it with Matt Crowther. And he was telling me that it felt exactly like, you know, the Dampa except the Dampa had, you know, extended track and all that stuff. And I rode it with someone that had a panic attack too, and they had to stop it before they launched.
00:28:29
Speaker
and had to get out of the car. But, um, it was just super, super quick. Um, but yeah, I'll send you guys a link in our chat and, and so you can see the video. I feel like there were different versions of the cars. Cause I remember the drag, like the dragster cars were like, like a single up cedar, but then there was a version where it was like two cedar and like a sports car kinda. Yeah. The ones, well, um, Hmm.
00:29:01
Speaker
I think I only wrote it with two like side by side, you know, people writing it. But was it like a, was it like a dragster car? Was it like a, yeah, it was like a sports car. Okay. Um, well kinda, it was kinda like a, I don't know. You would call it, excuse me. Um, it wasn't quite a dragster car, but it looked like a hopped up Camaro or something. Yeah.
00:29:25
Speaker
Yup. That's when I wrote it. And now like Kentucky kingdom and other parks had a version, but it was all like, um, I think it only went like 50 miles an hour or something, but it wasn't SNS that made those. I remember seeing like a snowmobile one or something or like a mo it was like a motorcycle. Oh no, they did have a snowmobile one. Um, Panama, Panama beach or Panama. What is it Panama beach city or yeah.
00:29:53
Speaker
wherever a miracle strip amusement park, like right down the street, they had, um, they had the, uh, double shot that holiday world has now, I believe. And they had that S and S it was a prototype. It was a snowmobile launch thing, but it didn't go more than probably 40 miles an hour. But that's, that's probably where they got the idea from. Yeah.
00:30:20
Speaker
Let me see why we're talking. See if I can find this real quick. Yeah, that, that looked like fun. I wish I could have tried one of those. It's like that launch seemed crazy. It was, it was just, uh, I mean, it was the same as the Dampa. It was exactly the same. Okay, here we go. I found it. Um, let me copy and paste this to S.
Ride Experiences and Park Observations
00:30:51
Speaker
But, you know, I have no reason, no reason why they, um, they, they took it out. It's funny cause they had a steering wheel. So, you know, all for theming. It didn't do anything. So the second that thing took off, I just put my arms up because, you know, you don't need to steer. No. Yeah. But that, I mean, that's instinctual, right?
00:31:18
Speaker
Yeah, for people like us, but I mean, you know, people are under the pressure that you had to steer it and that's why they were, you know, white knuckling the steering wheel. And then once you look at the ride system, you're like, Oh, this is just, it's on rails. It's not going to go anywhere, you know. You hope. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it is Florida. Well, okay. So the top speed was 116 in less than two seconds.
00:31:46
Speaker
So basically it was like one third of the link of Dragster's launch, maybe one fourth. And it got up to that speed. Wild. I need to get up to, you know, Great America. I haven't been there in many years and I want to write a, you know, they're, they're launched one. Cause that's technically, I think what the one of the, I mean, they still supposedly, but I don't,
00:32:16
Speaker
They said they changed it. So I don't know. Okay. Yeah. They gave it an extra. They like tweaked the launch. Although who the hell is checking that? I know exactly. Yeah. Our CVB bailed on the whole thing. They're just like, I don't know. Maybe self. Yeah. But yeah, I, uh,
00:32:47
Speaker
You got any other fun plans for the season, Sean? Nothing. I have absolutely zero plans to visit any US parks this year. I'm so busy with just work projects and other non-coaster projects that I'm hoping I can make it to Kings Island at least once and
00:33:07
Speaker
If I hit Cedar Point up this year, it'll be much, much later in the season, maybe in the spring. I hope I'm wrong with that. Um, but I, I mean, I didn't even buy a season pass to anything this year just because most of my park stuff is going to be concentrated on this three week trip in Japan. And then, uh, then I go to Alaska for work right after that. And, uh, there's just, this year is just flying by. There's just no time.
00:33:34
Speaker
But you know, next year is going to be a big year for me for parks, I'm sure. So, you know, I, I went 10 years from really writing anything, um, in the, in like the mid 2000s. And it did, it made me want to ride more, you know, from taking a break. So kind of what I'm doing right now. But what about you guys? Yeah, nothing really planned. I might go to lost Island.
00:34:04
Speaker
on one of the drives to Minnesota at some point. Have you been there yet? No, I haven't. All right. So it's, uh, it's, I had one of the best park experience I've ever had because the staff is so amazing. I mean, there was nobody there, but just be prepared for the SLC because it has a really, really, really bad jolt going into that first version.
00:34:29
Speaker
Is it otherwise fine or is it, is it rougher? I mean, it's like a typical SLC. I didn't find it terribly bad. I wrote in the front and I know the secret is to write it in the back, but I was shooting POV with a GoPro and, um,
00:34:43
Speaker
Like the staff before I got on, they were all just saying, Hey, you know, this isn't the smoothest ride. So just be prepared. And it's just because that there's, there's something wrong with the track or something in that first inversion. And it, I mean, it just, it, it banged my head, but not laterally. It banged it from the front to the back really hard. And yeah, it was really strange. And everybody that I know it's written, it has had the same issue. Every single person.
00:35:14
Speaker
Yeah. Good to know. So are you on the, are you on the shell razor is on the rougher side? I won't ever write it again. You want to? I will never write it again. Hell no. Never. No, I don't care. I mean, it's just, I, unless they take that whole section of track and replace it, um,
00:35:34
Speaker
Like it was offensively bad. Like, I mean, I heard you talk about it in an episode and I've heard it other couple of people, but I literally, I mean, I've written it, it's near clone in Japan. So I thought I knew what to expect. And that second half of that ride be on, it's not even just that big jolt at the bottom, like the whole second half of that ride. And I wrote in the front and it just, I mean, it just,
00:35:59
Speaker
bash me all the hell. Yep. It doesn't, it's to the point where like, uh, I said that to like, I can handle any coaster roughness and like, I don't have a problem with roughness, but that's not even roughness. It was like, like,
00:36:16
Speaker
fuck up like it's not like it isn't normal and i remember i was like really high when i wrote it and so i'm just imagining like i'm just thinking about like okay so we're in new jersey and this mall sketchy as fuck and it's because it's like a very eerie place and like you know feels like very like evil and shit like
00:36:36
Speaker
Like I'm just like, I'm just imagining like the, like the chassis, like snapping, you know, like, and then like the car flying off the track. Cause like a full final destination three, more like mind mender at West Edmonton mall.
00:36:54
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I, apparently I was lucky cause all the coasters were running when I was there. So I got all the four credits and my favorite one ended up being that, that multi-launched Intamin, the one that goes forward and backwards that thing. I mean, it's, it's, it shakes you. It's not like the other one, but, um, it was a lot of fun and I wish I would have written it again.
00:37:22
Speaker
but yeah, the other bigger slower. No, I, I, there's no way, there's no way it's not worth the pain. I want to get to that part. Cause I feel like it's going to close like yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, all the reviews I've heard are basically the same as what you guys are saying. So like, you know,
00:37:47
Speaker
It's hard to make it a priority. Well, someone asked me, asked me just this week because they wanted to go there this summer. If it was true that they changed their pricing plans and I have no idea when I was there, it was free to walk into the park, but you had to pay per ride or maybe you had to pay like $5 again. And I can't remember, but it was, um, it was, I bought,
00:38:08
Speaker
a ticket for every coaster and then wrote them and then left. I didn't do anything else, but I have no idea. Cause I know what didn't, when it opened, wasn't like $75. And that was just that you had to just deal with it. If everything was closed, you spent $75 to walk around the area or some crazy amount like that. Yeah, I think so. Or maybe it was like even 90 or something. Yeah. Something crazy. It was just, um,
00:38:39
Speaker
I hope they don't go back to something like that because that would kill that park. And like, if they're so desperate for cash, then I feel like that's the next inevitable move. Yeah, yeah.
00:38:58
Speaker
Something like that. I mean, it's right across the, you know, the water from New York city. So it's not like it's not in a big popular, not in a popular area. I mean, people can get to it. I think fairly easy, but you know, who knows? Well, it opened 10 years too late. Yeah. Like basically, even if they opened on time, like it was still kind of on the tail end of, of the mall culture. It's just, it's a weird place. Like the whole mall is bizarre and like,
00:39:29
Speaker
There's that whole corridor where that looks like a back rooms level. Yeah. And then. My favorite, my favorite like scene was there was a koi fish pond and the fish were dead. Oh my gosh.
00:39:47
Speaker
And it was right in front of a Louis Vuitton, but it was closed and it had like the chain link door lock thing closed. And then there's a fire alarm beeping in the Louis Vuitton. Like all the lights, those like fire alarm light strobes. Yeah. Oh my gosh.
00:40:10
Speaker
Oh, that's terrible. That's like when Busch Gardens used to have crocodiles in the pit before the lift hill on Montu. Oh yeah. And then people would just throw their gum and everything on top of them. Poor things. I'm glad they got rid of that. I just lost my audio. Hold on. Not really. Hold on. Hold on a second folks.
00:40:41
Speaker
Take all the time you need, Sean. All right. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, hold on. Hello. Yeah. Okay. There we go. Okay. I'm wearing wired headphones for this and it just got yanked out of my computer. So classic. Yeah. Love that. So, uh, Ben,
00:41:09
Speaker
You don't have any big plans for the season either? No, not really. I feel like I did a lot last year. And then this year is going to be kind of a, like a housework summer. So I gotta sand all the hardwood floors and then redo all the trim and then redo the bathroom.
Home Renovations and Natural Wonders
00:41:37
Speaker
So that's my goal. That's your Duluth place. This is the Denver place. Oh, okay. So instead of, yeah, instead of like just selling a house and upgrading, I'd now just have two starter homes that need work. So are you like right downtown Denver? Uh, I'm not right downtown. Um, you know where mile high stadium is.
00:42:01
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I went to a game there a couple of years ago. So I'm like, uh, like 10 ish blocks from that 10 blocks, 10 blocks West. Oh, okay. Yeah. I went to a game there. Somebody gifted my coworker and I tickets and we're just like, heck with it. You know, we're not big baseball fans, but we'll go. And it was a lot of fun, man. Nice. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good spot. Like, I mean, the team suck, but
00:42:29
Speaker
It wasn't a super energetic game. It was super hot when I was there, but I got to sit in the seats that are above the purple line. Oh, right. Yeah. So I guess I was higher than a mile or whatever that means. Yeah. Well, it's, it's got a good view too, but with all the new shit they're building around it, eventually it's going to get boxed in.
00:42:51
Speaker
which I, so there's kind of like, you know, in a lot of cities, there's obviously like a lot of pro housing, like pro housing, which is like, it's needed. Like we need more housing units, but sometimes they built shit that doesn't make sense. Like there's, um, uh, like there's certain like sight lines to the mountains where like a single spot could be like, you could see the entire,
00:43:19
Speaker
Mountain view from like a single spot in the city, but then they'll build like one apartment and it like completely blocks the view so Yeah, that's what happened to my mom when she moved to Phoenix She was on the bottom level of these apartments and she had this beautiful view of the mountains in Arizona and in another apartment complex across the street
00:43:43
Speaker
Was putting completely blocked her view so she ended up moving to that one and now she's like one of the top floors Overlooking and you know an even better view so
00:43:53
Speaker
Yeah. No, I was just in New Mexico last week and that just even the views out there, I would never tire looking at mountains, man. Seriously. I mean, I have none of that here in Ohio and, and well, you either Zach, but, uh, I always ask the locals, like, do you ever get tired of looking at them? And it's weird. Some of them are like, I, I don't even realize they're there. And some of them are like, every morning I look at them.
00:44:23
Speaker
It's also just a good, it's a good vantage point too of like wherever you are in the city, it's, it's, you can like visualize where you are geographically a lot easier when you have a vantage point like that. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have, I have to do that with radio towers. Even like, like my house now here, like, um, I get like, I don't have a mountain view per se, but I have just like five
00:44:50
Speaker
tops of peaks that I can see above the tree line. And it's like, it's not much, but I can like look at them and be like, okay, they're there. Like, nice. That's awesome. Yeah. I'd fucking stare at the mountains if I lived near them.
00:45:12
Speaker
And it's funny cause anytime friends from Mount West come to Ohio, like when I'm driving them through Columbus or, you know, surrounding areas that the one thing they always say is, Oh my gosh, it's so green. It's like always just so green. And I never, I never really even think about that, you know? Um, or they'll say, Oh my God, a real river, you know, cause like in LA, they don't have like real rivers, you know, like we do here. Yeah. Yeah. It took like,
00:45:42
Speaker
I don't know. Like after being out here for like once I hit like five years, when I go back home, I start to get, now I start to get that like, holy shit, it's green feeling again to where I kind of miss it. Yeah. Like you, you're up in it and you get used to whatever you're surrounded by, but now it's like flipped. So now when I go back to the midwest, I'm like, oh man, this is actually really cool. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. You get to see that contrast.
00:46:11
Speaker
Although like, and then like, but you step outside in the summer and then it's just like humid and then mosquitoes. And then when it rains, everything's like muddy and dirty. Yeah. I mean, humidity, humidity here in Ohio is just brutal. I mean, like our, our like 70 degrees is actually feels like, I don't know, like Arizona is like 85 degrees or 90.
00:46:40
Speaker
just that's so humid in the Midwest, a lot of places. And that's, I'm glad I have a job where I travel a lot, but it also kind of bugs my system out because I can never get used to a certain climate. And so when I get home for like a month or two, my system gets more used to the weather here in Ohio. Right when I get used to it, I go to someplace else and it's completely different. Like it was chilly in New Mexico when I was there. I was surprised.
00:47:09
Speaker
It'll get that way surprisingly for the West there, I guess, which is stark contrast from like Arizona, like you're talking about where it's like a hundred degrees as a baseline. Yeah. I mean, it was snow in a New Mexico when I was there and I'm just like, wow, you know, pretty crazy, but wild. Yeah.
00:47:36
Speaker
No, I can't wait because I'm going to hit last cup this year too. And that's the last state I need. So. Oh, shit.
00:47:44
Speaker
You doing a cruise or something? No, I'm going up for work. Um, like a three stop tour up there. And, and it's been, we've been wanting to do it for like 10 years, but just didn't logistically know how to pull it off. Now we have, uh, the backing and the way to, cause there's a tracking corporation called RNO carriers. It takes us around the country everywhere, but they don't drive up to Alaska. So we'd have somebody else there. We had to have them work with somebody else to get us up there because we're flying, you know, we're not driving.
00:48:13
Speaker
But I can't wait to go there. All the pictures I've seen and everybody I know it's been there, they're just like, oh, it's so beautiful. That's what I've always heard.
Travel Plans and Unique Phenomena
00:48:25
Speaker
And I would like to go and this is, I'm all shades of jacked up anyway, but like, I want to go like when it's dark for like three weeks.
00:48:36
Speaker
Whenever wherever that's at, you know where they don't get Sun. I'm pretty nocturnal like I like I like it when There's the Sun goes down at like five o'clock in the winter and it comes up at 5 a.m I'm definitely more comfortable at night than I am during the day But I can't imagine like three weeks or however long they go without that Dude no
00:49:00
Speaker
Or, you know, vice versa. If the sun was up for three weeks, it would rarely go outside, I don't think.
00:49:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's a, that's a, that was a tough one. Um, so like Seattle is not the same as Alaska, but in the summertime it does have, I think, I want to say there's two weeks where it doesn't get fully dark. It kind of stays in that twilight kind of glowish. I don't know what you call that. Yeah. Twilight. Um, but yeah, the sun comes up at like,
00:49:36
Speaker
some obscene time it's like before 4am and then it's light out until you know 10 30 almost 11 and it kind of like that fucked with me more than the darkness because it's just weird to like
00:49:49
Speaker
you get done with work and then like you eat dinner, you know, and you're like, maybe go for a walk or something. You like come back inside and you're just like, shit, it's still light out, but it's like eight 30. And then you take a nap. You like take a nap cause you're tired and then you wake up and it's like still light out. And then you feel like you want to go do something, but you have nothing really to do. And then, um, especially during COVID being locked inside, like, Oh God. Yeah, that was rough. That was rough, way rougher than the darkness.
00:50:19
Speaker
Oh man, darkness is cozy in a way. It is. And I think there's less people out. And I don't know. I'm a better driver in the night than I am today. Hell, if I was driving down that road last night, I would have still had a car probably. But you know.
00:50:40
Speaker
I don't know. I, the Finland's kind of like that too. It gets dark really late. Like it was like almost 11 and we can still see some, some sunlight. But I was only there for a couple of days. That's, that's what I need. I need light all the time. I mean, I need some light, but uh,
00:51:02
Speaker
Like I'm definitely more of a night owl, I think. Even though I don't stay up as late as I used to, but I used to have like a role like when I would see the sun come up. It's time for bed.
00:51:14
Speaker
One thing I miss was during the winter time in Seattle, there's always this kind of foggy like overcast that's really, really low. But what happens is that at night when the streetlights, all the streetlights in the city lights, it actually amplifies the city lights. So it's brighter at night than it is during the day. Oh, wow. So like
00:51:42
Speaker
Which is kind of nice because then you can have all the lights off in your like in your house. And then you just get this like glowing kind of ambient light that comes in. I don't know. It's kind of cozy. But then, yeah, like in the in the morning, it's like you wake up and it's glowing outside and it's like bright out. And then like the city lights go off and then it actually gets like darker. Oh, that's weird. As the morning goes on. That's wild. Yeah, that seems bizarre.
00:52:14
Speaker
Kind of feels like you're just like in a movie. I don't know. It's like somewhat warm out too. Cause like the overcast holds the humidity in. And so it's just like, you're walking in this like weird world. I, I wanted to go to when I was in New Mexico, I didn't have time, but I want to go to this town called Taos. Yeah. Taos is cool. Yeah. I've heard it's really cool, but I, I'm just curious if I can hear the hum. Do you know about that?
00:52:43
Speaker
I've heard of it, but I've never like witnessed it or anything. I went hiking and just, it was just like a quick mile hike. Um,
00:52:54
Speaker
Bandelier National Monument, I think it is, north of Santa Fe. And they had hot sauce in the gift shop called Taos Home. And I'm like, where have I heard that? And I remembered I watched the documentary on that sound. And it's not just Taos. There's many places around the world that supposedly you can hear it, but I'm just curious if I would have been able to hear it. Only like 20% of the people can, I guess.
00:53:17
Speaker
The earth's vibration or something? Um, everybody says it sounds like a diesel engine, just idling. Um, but some people think it's a waterfall underneath, uh, the crust, you know, uh, of the earth. Um, of course, you know, there's people that think it's like alien stations or something, but, um, there's all kinds of like videos on YouTube and stuff about it. I've been hearing about it for, I don't know, 30 years now.
00:53:47
Speaker
One other cool thing that's when you're in the desert or in this region is, so if you ever go hiking in the middle of the night, especially when there's a new moon, so it's super dark and clear, if you go up high enough to where you can see the full horizon,
00:54:08
Speaker
you'll actually see the like flashes in the sky and there, um, it's like the whole sky flashes, but it's super faint and it kind of almost looks like lightning. Um, and apparently it's just the, what have you called the radiation blasting off the sun, kind of like a light, almost like Northern lights, but like the faint. Wow.
00:54:33
Speaker
So like, especially if you're like getting really high and you're like hiking in the middle of the night and he was like, look out and you just see those like flashes in the sky. It's really weird. I would, I love that. There, there was something, there's a similar thing. Um, I had, I was in, um,
00:54:49
Speaker
It's on the Gulf of Mexico. It's on the Gulf side of the Florida. It was, um, Hernando Beach, Florida for an event. And our hosts were like, Hey, you know, we're facing the water. Maybe you'll see the green flash tonight when the sun goes down. And I said, what are you talking about? And on certain evenings when the sun just goes right under the horizon, there's a big green flash that happens. And there's people that have captured on video and stuff, but every night that I was there, I never got to see it. But it's just right when the sun goes like right below the horizon.
00:55:22
Speaker
I think I know. Yeah, I know you're talking about. I've never seen it, though. Yeah, I haven't either just on video, but I would love to see that, you know. Well, I traveled to Indianapolis for the solar eclipse to be 100 percent totality. I missed another one. It was fucking awesome.
00:55:44
Speaker
Everybody was, it took an hour and a half in New Mexico just to get 50. But I got some pictures and stuff and video, but everybody was calling me from Ohio like, dude, I saw stars and I saw planets for two minutes and there was fireworks going off in the middle of the day and all kinds of stuff like that. The birds stopped chirping, I guess. Yeah, that's what about the fireworks. That's what one of our friends said. They were at Cedar Point.
00:56:15
Speaker
And they said they had an event there for the eclipse. So they were operating or anything. Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, that's pretty cool. That's cool that they did that. Yeah. I mean, did any other parks do that? Do you know? Not that I'm aware of, but I don't. Here's the thing. I'm not really sure. Were they in a hundred percent totality? Yeah. Oh yeah.
00:56:45
Speaker
I'm sure. Okay. Yeah. Cause it was going up towards a Erie and Erie was at a hundred percent last time as well. One of my friends, Vincent, Vincent, if you're listening to this, hello, um, that I'm going to Japan with, he and his fiance, they went, um, to the one police in the country that like intersected somewhere in Illinois. So they stayed there and, and, uh, did it there as well.
00:57:14
Speaker
And he just released a video on it. It looks amazing. Like people go nuts. Yeah, it was. Yeah, I did the one in I did. I was in Tennessee for the 2017 one. Um, yeah, it's, it's a cool experience. The traffic getting home though is bad. It took us like 15 hours to get back from like Louisville or something.
00:57:44
Speaker
Oh, geez, geez. And like it's about seven and a half to get back from, well, seven and a half hours just driving to get back from Indianapolis, not including stopping for dinner and everything. Yeah. The worst problem though, is that like use it was using Google to get home because there were so many people trying to find alternate routes that like,
00:58:08
Speaker
Google would, you know, would tell you like, Oh, take a U-turn and then take a ride on this random highway. But then by the time you took it, there were like hundreds of cars in front of you. And then you learned that there's a stop sign and the cross traffic doesn't stop. Oh geez. So then you're just like, so then you're just like not moving and then people just say, all right, fuck it. I'm just going to like cut people off. And then people are driving in the ditches and stuff and
00:58:35
Speaker
It was a mess. Oh boy. Wow. That's a fucking nightmare. That sounds not too dissimilar from the experience I had driving back from Indianapolis other than rather than taking Google's advice to exit off and take some alternate route. I was like, we're just going to kick it on 65 regardless of the traffic.
00:59:01
Speaker
Yeah. There's times where you just have to ignore the alternate routes where it's like, oh, it takes some random ass way to save two minutes. It's like never worth it. Nope, nope, nope. I ain't trying to take state routes back. Yeah. And not even state routes that'd be like, you know, take Buckley Road. No.
00:59:26
Speaker
tornado chasing dirt roads. Yeah, exactly. You're like, it's one road that just goes on. You can't even see the end of it on the map. You're just like, nah. It's like the other thing on road trips, too, is like when you're trying to get food and you see the it'll, you know, it's like food at this exit. But you don't sometimes it doesn't tell you how far off the exit it is.
00:59:56
Speaker
Yeah, I hate that. You're like, oh, okay, 15 minutes off the highway, convenient. Yeah, great. I really, really wanted Cracker Barrel too, huh?
Podcast Laughs and Coaster Culture
01:00:13
Speaker
So, Ben, well, Sean, you know, I should phrase it to you, really. It's been a little bit since Ben and I have recorded.
01:00:25
Speaker
And to get you up to speed with our last episode, we had watched a discovery channel show featuring prominently Cedar Point and a look at the operations of Cedar Point. I'm sure you're familiar with this show. Absolutely. I listened to your commentary. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Hmm.
01:00:52
Speaker
I don't, I don't ever want to assume people that taking the time to come on this show have actually listened. No, I actually listened to it on a flight. Yeah. I feel like we could be just fine for dozing off on a flight. Well, I mean, the funny thing is because you, you have these bits that just make me laugh like really loud. When I'm on a plane, I have to like,
01:01:22
Speaker
kind of condensed that down, but there's been times where I've played back several things, uh, just cause it made me laugh. And I know the people sitting next to me on the planes are just like, Oh, it sounds like he's listening to a circus, you know, but little do they know, you know, it can be just random things. It's just hilarious. Yeah.
01:01:41
Speaker
No, I know what you mean. Like listening to any comedy form with headphones in an airport is always kind of awkward. It is. Like I try, I just try to tune everybody out. So you'll be in a Southwest seat lineup laughing and then like people look behind you and you just seem like creepy. I always feel, I always feel creepy. Like no matter what I do, I just feel like awkward and
01:02:09
Speaker
Tall and creepy to people. So like, then I start laughing and then I'm like, Matt Santi. So I get in the music so much that listening to podcasts actually comes to me down on the planes because I'm, you know, doing double bass with my feet and all kinds of stuff. When I'm listening to the heavy, fast stuff, especially if I'm listening to something like Meshuggah, I'm, I'm trying to do the tricky timing. And I mean,
01:02:34
Speaker
People probably think there's something wrong with me so I have to like keep that in check like oh crap people can see me doing this you know you probably can feel me stomping on the ground I mean not anything heavy like annoying people but
01:02:46
Speaker
you know, I just try to keep to myself. I shouldn't say this brings me joy, but if I'm sitting next to somebody and I get in a, you know, I usually get the window seat because I can rest my head on that side and not worry about, you know, pissing anybody off. But if I'm sitting next to somebody and they sit down next to me and they immediately just start
01:03:08
Speaker
Chatting up and you know, I can be nice and everything but the second I bring out put the earbuds in sometimes I do it mid-sentence when they're talking and Just to get to the point because I know I won't be able to listen to anything, you know And I'll just put them in and they'll be like, oh, okay. Okay. I gotcha, you know, I
01:03:29
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you. Uh, hope you have a nice flight. Yeah. And then because sometimes I'm honestly, before the thing even takes off and I wake up like when we're going down the runway, but, um, it's plain sleep. It's not quality sleeping at a stretch. Yeah. I remember going to a hypnosis show, Susan Rosen, great America during Fright Fest. And she would always say, um, you know, hypnotic sleep is worth like two to three times as much as an hour of, you know, regular sleep.
01:03:57
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard that too. I think plain sleep is worth like 0.2 to 0.3 times. I mean, I, I slept from Germany to Boston almost the entire, what, eight hour flight, seven hour flight, uh, because I had four complete seats to myself and I just raised armrest and laid out flat.
01:04:19
Speaker
And that's the only time I, and it was, it was actually quality sleep. Like I was woken up by the flight attendant saying, Hey, we're landing. And I didn't wake up one time on that journey. So it can be done, but it has to be one of those rare instances, you know? And it's worse to even fall asleep. Like if you have a four hour layover at an airport and you're just exhausted, I hate sleeping in those chairs and just like airports do.
01:04:50
Speaker
That's barely even sleep because you got to like keep it on your bag and shit. I know. Yeah, exactly. You're like propped up against a wall with a bag clutched in your arms and your chins, just like tucking into the bag.
01:05:09
Speaker
Yeah. With the back thing, I don't know. I feel like that stuff is pretty rare because I, that's always my fear, but then I'm like, I don't know. There's so many cameras in this place. Yeah, exactly. But I still get paranoid that, you know, and just by putting my bag down and maybe getting something to eat, you know, and eating right there, somebody's can get underneath the seat and pick something. So I'm always a little bit cautious, but
01:05:36
Speaker
But I don't know how we start talking about this and from a point, but well, I was just going to say, I feel like it's not so likely that like your shit will get stolen as like either like you come back and like a cleaning guy threw it out. Yeah, yeah. It ends up in like lost and found. And then you have to deal with that and you're like, I got a fucking flight to catch and, you know, yeah.
01:06:02
Speaker
I left my camera bag on a airport shuttle in Columbus getting my car and I didn't realize I'd left it on there until I got back to my house. And I raced all the way back to the airport and went back to that lot. And as I was pulling in, I saw the guy with the camera bag walking in to give it to his boss. And I'm like, dude, that's mine. I gave him like 50 bucks. That's nice of you.
01:06:31
Speaker
Well, I mean, that's all I had in my pod. I would have given him more if I had more because I was so happy because my whole life was in that thing back then, you know? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, it's good it got saved because that's the other thing. I feel like if anything is stolen, it's more likely it's like one of the fucking luggage handlers. Yeah, I've had stuff ripped off of my luggage before. Nothing like too bad. But, you know, open it up and be like, hmm.
01:06:59
Speaker
Where's the cord for this? And where's this to, you know, something and oh, okay. Somebody got my luggage. I never lock it either. Just, just wrapped that shit in a Saran wrap. You know what? I just started noticing people doing that. I w when I was waiting for my luggage here in Columbus the other night after a new Mexico, there was a bunch of luggage that was wrapped in Saran wrap.
01:07:27
Speaker
That's what I'm saying. You don't know where you're talking with it. Like the luggage itself or the seams inside of it. No, the luggage itself. Yeah. Like full on bag. Don't wrap the like handle or anything or the wheel or whatever, but you wrap the entire bag itself in Saran wrap and that way it's not getting fucked with. And if it is with, you know. Yeah. Do you guys remember, um, it was a short lived airline. Oh boy. Value jet.
01:07:58
Speaker
No, they were I flew down the Florida like round trip for like 38 bucks or something I mean they were terrible airline, but I had this bag and it was the first like real piece of luggage I ever bought with my own money and God it was probably
01:08:15
Speaker
late nineties, early two thousands, but I flew value jet and my bag didn't come back through the carousel. So I was like, Oh man, did you guys use my bag? And they're like, no, it's coming out, but we had to modify it. That was the word they used. We had to modify your luggage. And I'm like, what the hell does that mean?
01:08:31
Speaker
And it came out and it was wrapped in all this damaged yellow tape, its own crime scene. And the zippers busted on the bag and my stuff was flying everywhere, I guess. So they, they had to tape it all together with this, this yellow and black tape. You know, I don't know. I can't remember if I lost anything, but it was so funny seeing that thing come out. And I'm just like, what the hell did you guys do to my bag?
01:09:00
Speaker
you know, but hey, worst things have happened.
01:09:08
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, the, the lovely experience of flying commercially. Yeah. I had a 20 minute layover in Phoenix, 20 minute, my coworker Kelly, she changed her flight. She's like, there's no way we're making that. There's no way. And I landed and I was running to that concourse and I like heard them say my name on the PA and I'm like shouting down the rest of the gates. I'm coming. I'm almost there.
01:09:37
Speaker
And I made it with one minute to spare. I was nice. Yeah, I was a sweaty meatloaf on that plane. No, I was I was drenched because I had a hoodie on and it was Arizona because I just left from Chile or Santa Fe. So, yeah, not a fun experience, but I made it. I got home. Yeah, Sky Harbor ain't nothing to fuck with either. No, no. And I was in Concourse B at the further in Ferguson and I had to go to Concourse A at the further in.
01:10:06
Speaker
And I was just shouting out people like, like, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. But I made it. It worked. Those are some long, long corridors. Yes, they are. With the fucking windows. Yeah. Yeah.
01:10:23
Speaker
I remember once I ate too many edibles and I had to connect through there. Oh God. I like walk off the plane and I could tell like my walking was funny and I felt like my body like slowly tipping to the side. Oh no. And it was like the same thing. It was like a 20 minute like connection. I like couldn't, it was like a dream or like you couldn't run. I'm just like, I'm so fucked up. I can't like, this is so far.
01:10:50
Speaker
Wow, that's not the airport to do that in No, there's a couple that like you don't want to like their LAX fucking oh god, I hate LAX with a passion God, I hate that airport. Yeah Houston Houston, I don't like Detroit's I don't like oh hair Orlando Yeah
01:11:18
Speaker
The one in Santa Fe is hilarious because you land in the baggage claim is literally 50 feet from the plane. And it's in this like trailer with like rollers. And it's such a small building that not everybody on the plane can go in there and get their luggage. You have to like take turns. It's so strange being in an airport that small. It's like, Hey, that person walked out with my bag.
01:11:45
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, and then when I was going through, I have a TSA pre-check and I was like, well, this part, this airport's not going to do that, but they do. It's like right when you get up to show your ID, they just let you go through the thing without, you know, taking your shoes and everything off. Peter had your bag, but the guy that was checking my ID, he looks at me and he's like, well, what time of day were you born? And I just thought it was like a new thing that TSA was doing. They wanted another time you were born to verify. So I said, well, I was born at 9 a.m.
01:12:14
Speaker
And he looks at me and goes, huh? He goes, you were born exactly 12 hours after I was. He looked at my date on my birthday. I thought that was pretty weird. Nobody's ever told me that before. That's really weird. Yeah. So I guess, I mean, yeah, that's never happened to me in all my trips. So.
01:12:36
Speaker
There's a few TSA people, like old guys that, um, they like to fuck with you when, when you show them your ID, especially if like they can tell people are high. Cause you know, and I remember once like my eyes are probably a little bloodshot and he just like, I like give him ID and he just looks down at the ID and like looks up like couple times. And then he's just like, are you winning the race?
01:13:02
Speaker
I'm just like, uh, I hope so. And he's like, yeah, me too. And then he just like hands me the ID and I'm like, fuck. Wow. Wow. All right. Not today. Yeah. Anyway.
01:13:28
Speaker
uh digressions aside let's uh get to the discovery channel scream parks i haven't seen this in a while ben this was your pick all right so i mean we're trying and we're trying something new with this we'll see if it works yeah hopefully real quick i'm gonna roll it and make sure you guys see it and then we'll
01:13:56
Speaker
You know? All right. So you guys have your screens at the ready? Yep. Mine's at zero, zero, zero. Cool. Oh, wait. Mine's at four or something. Should I rewind back? Yeah. See, we all have separate control, which is weird. So I'm curious if someone starts it, it should be that for all of us. We'll find out. OK. All right. I'm going to try rolling it. You guys let me know if it rolls for you. OK.
01:14:30
Speaker
Yep. Cool. Cool. Excellent. So it's working. That's exciting. No, that's Rick. Yeah. Um, I figured you would recognize several of these folks, Sean. So we'll see. I haven't watched this stuff in a while. Rick's a imagineer actually.
01:14:57
Speaker
That's awesome. Do you know what he does? Oh yeah. Yeah. He's a, he helped with a rise of the resistance. He did. Um, Oh, there's a Sarah Alvey. Oh yeah. She was, she was sitting on the far end. Um, yeah, he does. He just has the best job in the world, man. I mean, he, he's a full on imaginary. Did a lot of that, you know, that whole room and rise of resistance with the hologram. That was all him. A lot of the stuff in the ride. Um,
01:15:28
Speaker
Oh, Paul Rubin. Paul Rubin was the first coaster enthusiast I ever talked to. Really? Yep. I went to my library asking if they had any books on roller coasters and they gave me the address for Ace because they had a magazine and he was the one that answered. And I talked to him for two and a half hours. Oh, nice. Wild.
01:15:54
Speaker
When was that approximately, uh, 1992, maybe 91. And then I finally met him when I was outside of magic mountain recording X testing. And, uh, he wasn't terribly nice. So, well, um, it was nice to me. He just wasn't nice to my friends. Ah, well, let's see here. That's, that's Eric Boardman doing the thing on here, isn't it?
01:16:22
Speaker
Definitely is. Oh, Kenny went laserly. He has such a distinguishable voice. Yeah. He's a coaster enthusiast too. Do you know him? No, no, no. I've never met him, but the people that I know that's been interviewed by him say he knows that he really does his coaster stuff or has worked with him in the past. Yeah. I'd love to get him on the show. Oh, you should send a message.
01:16:48
Speaker
That would be cool to have a better contact for him. Yeah, even if he's on the show, you should like do an intro and have him introduce it. That would be amazing. That would be fucking awesome. If anybody out there listening knows how to get us in touch with Eric Boardman, please. But I'll look into it a little further, because, yeah, that would be cool.
01:17:15
Speaker
Now I know for sure when I reached out to Paul Rubin, and this was a couple of years ago before he passed, obviously, he didn't reply about coming on this show. So, which is probably a wise choice if you make an official publication.
01:17:33
Speaker
A lot of people are afraid to kind of be themselves, I think, on these things. I mean, I know somebody in the industry, somebody asked me to reach out to them so they could be on their podcast or show or whatever, and they asked for a list of questions. And when they got the questions, they turned it down. They're like, I can't talk about this, this, this, this, this, this, but I can talk about this, this, this, and they didn't want to do the show. They thought it would be too boring.
01:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, and that's the thing is I don't think what we do really melds well with having a strict list of questions. I'm just looking at everybody on these rides and seeing if it's anybody we know. I recognize that as being just like Magic Mountain produced b-roll. Yeah, totally. But a lot of these are Ace members writing.
01:18:27
Speaker
Imagine that makes sense. Yeah. I know I'm in a lot of the Kings Island ones that they still use today. Like back from the day. Also makes sense. See here. Yeah. Are you on the, are you on the package of any of the nano coasters? Uh, I have no idea. I've never got, I I've bought nano coasters for people, but I've never, there's David Escalante. Yep. Yep. And it went all the way up. Yeah, it did.
House of Pinball and Ride Mishaps
01:18:58
Speaker
One of my first times riding that there was only five of us in the car. I think it was Mike Cali. It was Chris Murray. And I think it was Rick. And they kept on yelling five, five, you know, five. And I didn't know what it meant. And they were like, there's only five of us. And we got up to the very top and like kind of kiss the brakes. It's the only time I've ever had to happen. Dan, there's Rick. He's got, you got to see his house. He's got like pinball machines all throughout his house. And his college roommate was weirdo Yankovic.
01:19:28
Speaker
No shit. Yep. Wow. Yeah. He's one of the, he's, he's one of the most amazing people I know. I'd love to meet him. I've seen him on tons of these shows and I've heard anytime, anytime I'm out in LA, I hang out with him. So, um, we'll arrange a time or something and you know, maybe we'll, we'll just hang out. It's, it's,
01:19:54
Speaker
I mean, you just wouldn't believe his knowledge of the Disney events at all. Uh, you know what? I don't know. Cause I'm going to D 23 and if there's any chance he'll be there. I'll have to ask him. I haven't talked to him in a few months, but, um, who's back there. Now I gotta say the only time I've actually been on this ride,
01:20:20
Speaker
It had a misfire or something, because it started launching, and then it just started slowing down, as if you hit the gas a little bit, and then just took your foot off of the pedals altogether, until it hit the incline, and then rolled back just a foot, and then just sat there, and then we got winched back to the station.
01:20:50
Speaker
Oh man. I mean, I really, I love that ride. I know it gets a lot of crap, but it's, it's a lot of fun. The, um, also the whole, the whole thing, like when there's a power cut or whatever, like when you get a, it's not a rollback, but when you rolled backwards through the station and sudden, yeah, I've seen that happen, but I've never written it when it happened. That sounds not pleasant.
01:21:18
Speaker
One of my first times on Superman, I was riding it and there was a guy sitting next to me and he put like a cup of ice in his pocket. And then when we were going up, he took the cup out and put it over my head and I went to block myself cause I thought I was going to get drenched with water and he yanks the cup away. And just the ice was just floating like all around the train and it went away. That's awesome. Yeah. It was so strange looking. Remember zero G keys.
01:21:47
Speaker
Yes. And I remember in another one of these shows, Paul Rubin has a banana that he takes on there. Yeah. And he does basically the same trick, which makes sense because, you know, fruit, like soft fruit like that can fall from that height and generally not hurt somebody. Yeah. And they recorded this when the park wasn't open to the public and
01:22:14
Speaker
And so there wasn't like any guests walking underneath the pathways or anything. Right, right. Now the zero G keys thing, that was Ben's idea, which is pretty fun. Where if you have a lanyard on your keys, and this is only if you have a lanyard. Oh, watch it float. Yeah. You knot it through the loop on your, like a one of your belt loops.
01:22:38
Speaker
like a basic knot and then leave it on your lap, the keys. And then, yeah, when you get airtime, you'll see the keys floating. Did you guys ever notice they I don't think they're on there anymore, but the
01:22:52
Speaker
Behind the first row and second row on Griffin, if you were like in the back or second row, they had G meters. Um, these little rubber bands with weights on them with numbers that when you would hit positive G, the thing would go down and to a certain number, when you get negative Gs on the ride, it would go up above. So you could just sit there and watch it bounce up and down the entire ride. I remember seeing that on helping guys when I was there. Oh, okay. I didn't know they had an up guys. I know that I've seen it on Griffin and I've seen it on one other coaster before.
01:23:21
Speaker
Yeah, it was so cool. I had never seen that on any other ride before. And the only time I've been to that park was back in 2005. So, like, I remember riding alpine guys and seeing that and being like, that's really cool. Because like, of course, we're our nerdy asses know what that is. Yeah. Pretty no one on in all disclosure.
01:23:45
Speaker
Goliath here is the coaster that essentially made me the PR director for ACE when I was at position because I went out there for vacation
01:23:59
Speaker
And the night that I arrived, Jeff Johnson was like, Hey, there's a ERT on Goliath next morning. Do you guys want to go? So it was my mother, myself and Scott Short. And we go to the park and we were in the back and then the producers heard that we came from the Midwest to ride this coaster. So they changed their entire narrative and made us do the play by play. And because I did that play by play for one of these shows, um, that's when ACE was like, Hey, we're looking for a new PR director. Would you do it?
01:24:29
Speaker
And it was all because of this. And because I did this one, I did one on Millennium Force. I did one on Dragster. I've done several at Kings Island, all because of this ride. Oh, nice. So how, how are those shoots like, are they fun? Are they stressful? There's a lot of waiting, a lot of waiting. The one that we did for Goliath, um,
01:24:52
Speaker
We got there in the morning and we wrote it a few times and then they did interviews with us like walking in line for the ride in the afternoon and we had to like act scared. Like they told us act scared. And then they weren't happy with the footage they got. So they re-shot our reverse POV while the park was open.
01:25:11
Speaker
So like we had a GP behind us waving at the camera and stuff like that, but, um, they can be a lot of fun, but I mean, the one I did for, uh, um, what was it? MSNBC, I think it was on dragster the year it opened. Um, we did the entire shoot in two takes like on the ride. We only wrote it twice, but sometimes like on son of beast, they would ask us to ride all day.
01:25:46
Speaker
That's gotta be a lot. Yeah. Oh yeah. And like Jeff Siebert, when he was at the park, he would say for this shoot, you guys are sitting in one and the front of the second car, which was notoriously the roughest seat on son of beast hands down. And, um, we would sit six hours in that seat. Good God.
01:26:15
Speaker
Yeah, he would just do that to mess with us. But hey, you know, we were riding a coaster all day, you know, who doesn't like to do that? When I was younger, yes. Me here at fucking 35, I'm like, I don't know. If given the opportunity and the ride, I would totally do it again. But
01:26:40
Speaker
It has to be a, I just can't do it like I used to. Um, but given the chance, um, like I think the last time I did any sort of like marathon writing was that, uh, media preview for, um, iron Guazzi. And I think I got like 19 rides on it. But like diamond back on its media day, I got 66 rides, but I was there for 12 hours. By the way, that was a 15 years ago tomorrow.
01:27:11
Speaker
Wow. Diamondback opened. The Diamondbacks media day was 15. I have a video being released tomorrow of Diamondbacks media day and it was 15 years ago tomorrow. Islands of Adventure opened up 25 years ago next week. Or abouts there. Yeah. Fuck. I know. Like, so I remember being a kid and hearing about that and being super intrigued.
01:27:41
Speaker
Well, I should say it didn't open on, it was the day that they let ACE and other people in. When we went there, we got to preview it like a week or so before it opened. I think it was somewhere around those times. That's still my favorite park in the country. That's an awesome park. So, um, I guess we should talk a little bit about a couple of things. First of all, question, top thrill too. Thoughts?
01:28:09
Speaker
You know what? I mean, I, I, I'm very curious to see how it will ride, but unfortunately because of my year, I don't, there's a chance I may not even write it this year, but I hope I'm wrong. But, um, what I loved about that ride is now gone. So, um, I'm sure I'll like it as I think the highlight for me, and I won't know until I write it, but it's probably going to be the backwards spike because I've done Superman backwards. And that was to me a lot better than going forwards.
01:28:38
Speaker
So if it feels like Superman does or did when it was running backwards, then that'll be quite a treat. But I mean, the rest of the ride is what it is. I'm more intrigued by the operating system and how that's working as opposed to the actual ride experience, I guess. So we'll see. But like, I'm not going to race up there opening week or anything. I have to ride it. Those days are long past me.
01:29:04
Speaker
Well, yeah, because it's going to go down a bunch and have a long as hell line. Well, and that's another thing. If I'm going to go up there and buy a ticket to get into the park, I'm not going to, I want to make sure, you know, I can ride it. So I'm, you know, if I have to wait a year for that to happen, I have no problem doing that. That's the thing is like, who wants to go to an opening day of anything now?
01:29:30
Speaker
Well, I've just learned my lesson, you know, yeah, I've learned my lesson over the years. So wow. No X there, which is wild. I mean, there was a job. No, there was employees sitting at the top of the lift, too. I don't know if you saw that. Yeah, I got that. That's wild. That's their official B roll. That was the one they released when that coaster opened. That's always been in there like their POV. Interesting. This is this has always been my favorite of the seven inversion arrow loopers.
01:29:59
Speaker
And Rick told me when I wrote this with him, uh, a while ago, or, and he told me that this is the only arrow looper with drive tires in the station. And they did that to the boost capacity. Oh, we lost, we lost Ben. Ben's computer crashed. Great. Oh boy. All right. Well, we'll see you when you log back on Ben. Um,
01:30:28
Speaker
I hope he can join us right where he's where we're at. Yeah, hopefully it'll just automatically launch. So. Let me think here. Oh, I can't remember Shockwave or Great American Scream Machine enough, I wrote both of them, but I can't really remember well enough because I only wrote them one time each.
01:30:52
Speaker
They were, in my opinion, considerably jankier and rougher than this one. This one isn't smooth, but it still packs a punch. It still has a purpose, I think. And I'm glad it's still round. I don't know for how much longer, but it's just a slightly different version of the other ones. This is definitely one of those rides though, where like, if they announce it's closing, I'm booking a trip.
01:31:22
Speaker
You know what? I might, I might do that as well. I mean, when I wrote it last year, um, I wrote it with the intention of, Hey, this is going to be my last ride. Cause it's not going to be around forever. Cause I only get to that park maybe once every five years or so. And it's like, I would go back. So, so I have like basically three trigger trips.
01:31:49
Speaker
in mind, which basically is like, if there's an announcement about this ride, then I'm immediately, that it triggers me to book a trip, right? Yeah. Oh, he's back. Yes. Awesome. We'll get Ben in on this. Are you seeing, what are you seeing right now, Ben? It's on 1738.
01:32:08
Speaker
Um, yeah. Yep. Yep. Perfect. So, uh, we were just discussing, um, and I can get into horticulture if we'd like to, although we'll keep it more coaster focused since this is your favorite coaster. Um,
01:32:28
Speaker
This Ben, I've got three ideas for trigger trips, basically, where if they announce anything about three rides, triggers me book a trip. So first one, Viper Magic Mountain. They announced they they're closing it. I'm booking a trip. Yeah. Right. Second one. And I hate to even put this out into the atmosphere, but Magnum. Oh, wow.
01:32:56
Speaker
If they announce it's closing, I'm definitely booking a trip. You guys probably don't know Cedar Point without Magnum, right? Nope. I remember the park well enough before it. So it would be devastating if they took that out, but I remember the park without it. Wow. Yeah. Cause that, that opened the year I was born.
01:33:20
Speaker
Oh shit. Okay. Well, you just, nah. To date myself. Um, anyway, I turned 53 this year, so I'm considerably older.
01:33:36
Speaker
And yet we've made a, made a friendship through weird hobby of roller
Community Bonds and Bold Discussions
01:33:41
Speaker
coasters. Well, that's the, that's the beauty. That's the beauty of it. It's just there, there's people that are 90 years old and there's people that are 15 years old that had loved the same hobby. And I've always thought that was pretty cool to this hobby, but at the same time, like, I mean, it keeps you young mentally, I think. So definitely.
01:34:02
Speaker
I agree. As long as there is definitely an overwhelmingly positive aspect to the hobby itself, if you can clean it. Oh, absolutely. But you guys are here to show the other side.
01:34:23
Speaker
Hey, well in that we're also trying to make sure that we have a cool community. Absolutely. That's the, and that's the most important thing. You know, you guys look at it differently and that's what I, I've always respected about this whole podcast and everything that you're not afraid to say what, you know, what you want, but you know, there's other theme park type websites out there that would never dare do any of that stuff. So hats off to you guys for being bold. It's not for everyone, you know, I'm sure, but hey,
01:34:54
Speaker
I dig it. And that's, and that's fine. Cause the people that are trying to go for anyone end up making broad stroke statements against that. Nothing against that. Nope. Nope. No. Hey, you do you exactly. Now I can't remember. It's like, so the, the, the people that are listening to us right now, can they hear the commentary from the thing? Are they going to be just watching it like with their own on their own YouTube or whatever?
01:35:23
Speaker
If it's picking it up, then they'll be hearing it. OK. If not, then it's on them to. Cue it up properly. Were you guys ever big into like these types of shows like these Batman stunt things? I never got to really watch one. I watched one at Six Flags Ohio, but I don't know. I think I've discovered that these these types of things aren't my gig. Yeah, not really. I dug it when I was a kid. I went and saw it when I was like, I don't know.
01:35:53
Speaker
whenever it was at great America, I don't know, remember what year that would have been, but yeah. And I really liked it. But again, I was a small child. So, uh, somebody I know, well, I don't know, but I know of them in Columbus has one of these from six flags. Like they have one sitting in like their garage, but they like collect cars and stuff that
01:36:22
Speaker
is cool. And also like, for some reason, like seem strikes me as a very Ohio thing. Yeah, of course. There's a, there's a coaster enthusiast I know here in Columbus that has a duplicate of kit, the kit car from Knight Rider.
01:36:45
Speaker
Like you end up in some weird bar in Youngstown and some dude's like, Hey, you want to see the car from Flintstones Viva Rock Vegas? It's like, uh, sure. I guess. Oh, that was such a bad effect.
01:37:02
Speaker
Yeah, that was fucking terrible. Even for like 98 or whatever. I was going to say, even there was people that are watching this live going, wow, they could have done better with that. Oh, I remember all this stuff at the bottom too, where you could build the fastest, scariest coaster ever. And it was like four elements you could choose from. Yep. Yeah. It was just like a 2d side image basically. I don't even think it, it didn't run, did it?
01:37:28
Speaker
No, I think it just, I think it had like a little black dot for the car that went around or something. I don't remember.
01:37:38
Speaker
So do you guys remember like Cedar points website had the, like the skyline, but it was all like in, um, flash. So it had like some of the rides. So the guy that ran the, all the, those websites back then, uh, was a good friend of mine. And he said, uh, Hey, uh, at this time I want you to watch the logo cause I'm only going to do it once. So he had like three of us logging our computers and he programmed a rollback on dragster on that skyline just for one time. Oh, nice. Yeah. It went up and went back down. He's like, I'm not going to do it again.
01:38:08
Speaker
That's fun. I remember in college, I took a Flash class and I did that for, so Ciffcam World had a banner, but it wasn't animated. So for like a final project, I did that animation, but for the Great America skyline in Flash, it was pretty cool. I learned a lot about Flash and then I graduated and realized Flash was irrelevant.
01:38:33
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, the very first, uh, videos I ever uploaded to YouTube in like 2008, they were all flash. Like that was the only rendering you could upload to YouTube. And it was like, like a five minute video was like 15 meg in size or something. It was terrible quality. Yeah. I don't think I ever used flash. I was a windows movie maker guy. Oh, I remember that too.
01:39:04
Speaker
Flash was, I mean, I liked Flash because you could program, like it was really easy to program objects and to have multiple layers, especially for websites. So you can make some really cool websites in Flash and have animated, you know, like animated drop downs and like all sorts of cool stuff. But
01:39:30
Speaker
They, I guess HTML5 is pretty similar. I don't even know what's past that, but. I just wanted to really quick call attention to the fact that the, the control scent, uh, room of religious revenge had the question marks painted all over it to say like, what's the problem? Can we fix it? What does this button do? Do you think they blast the music on loop down there too? Oh crap. This is Chris Knight. Okay.
01:40:00
Speaker
Oh, you know this guy too? Well, he's an enthusiast, but the day I did my magic, my goliath shoot, he was like an extra or something and we hung out all day, a bunch of us, but he gave me, ironically, as he saw on Riddler, the visit after this, I was at Knott's Berry Farm and he gave us this sliver. It's like he took a B&M wheel from this coaster.
01:40:24
Speaker
and then cut it in half. And then when you're looking at the, like if you take it apart and look at it, he made a slice in the wheel, like the size of a credit card and put a hole into it and made it a key chain and gave it to us. So I have part of a wheel from this as a key chain. And that's who gave it to me. It was Chris. I thought he looked familiar. I just forgot his name, but that's who gave it to us. I still have it somewhere in my box of archives. I just, I never used it as a key chain.
01:40:54
Speaker
Cause everybody would be like, what is that? A piece of bread? You know, no, it's a polyurethane wheel. I mean, I forgot about him, man. I mean, that is, that's definitely a conversation piece. Although the practicality in terms of a key chain in terms of like the likelihood of it getting like beat up or stolen somehow or lost, you know? Yeah. Well, yeah. Someone gave me a full coaster wheel too. And I don't know if it's from, um,
01:41:24
Speaker
Goliath or this, but it's like the whole wheel, everything that they were throwing out and they were going to auction off a coaster thing and they were just like here. I have video of Rick Turner doing that exact thing right there, adding a train on Goliath for our video shoot. They're like, Hey, Rick, you want to add a train? And he was like, uh, how do you do it? And they walked into the process that that'd be fun to do. That would be fun to do.
01:41:53
Speaker
It's pretty easy, I'm sure. Those, these trains are very comfortable. They are. I just wish like the ride was more exciting. I mean, it's, it's definitely a very strong positive G ride and it has that one airtime moment, but, um, they only built this just so they could get over the Fujiyama record. I believe that's what I was told.
01:42:22
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And then and then they had the record rugs swiped out from under them. Yep. The the smoothness is definitely held up, though. Oh, yeah. Like it doesn't feel like it's aged. No, it's it's nice still in terms of. Like comfortable train, yeah, and.
01:42:50
Speaker
Real smooth. I would suspect that that isn't that thing in Orlando at SeaWorld. It is SeaWorld. Yes. SeaWorld. The Penguin B&M that's two across. Yeah. I would suspect that the trains might feel like similar to these, perhaps even though this isn't B&M.
01:43:12
Speaker
I mean, have you been on the trains on Steel Dragon, the B&M ones? Yeah. Oh yeah. That makes sense. Okay. How are those? Very tight. Because they have a shin guard too. Oh no. What's with the fucking shin guards? Can we drop the shin guards? Yeah. And you know, I was bigger than I am now when I went in 2019 and it was tight for me to even get the bar down on that one.
01:43:41
Speaker
But I mean, I've never been turned down a ride. Is this a YouTube ad or is this an actual ad? No, this is a, this is an actual ad that I was going to say, why are they chilling old vehicles on here for? Uh, yeah. Thrills, chills and spills. I remember this. Oh man. I was so, yeah. Oh my God. These IMAX. Wow.
01:44:10
Speaker
as I'm watching this on an iMac or well, MacBook, but, um, my brother had one of those. The handle on the top was nice. It was like a bowling ball. Oh yeah. I never even knew that they had one of those there. Wow.
01:44:38
Speaker
I don't know who does those announcements. That's not Eric Boardman, but Discovery Channel definitely had one guy for the thrill thing for the intros, for the promos. You're watching thrills, chills, and spills. It's probably the same guy who's like, you're watching shark week. Yeah, exactly. You're watching dog the bounty hunter. Do you know Marlon Scott?
01:45:09
Speaker
Uh, no, he's an enthusiast. I mean, he's a, he's a legend from what the hell I know. What are these in the stomach of someone or now there's a license plate in there. Um, but, uh, oh crap. What was I going to say? Something about Marlin.
01:45:32
Speaker
Oh, he, there's like, you know, like there, there's a company, there's several companies around the country that make like radio station jingles, like call letters, like W B O Y. It's like a choir. Yeah. Well, they, you can pay them if they have extra time and they can do your name that way. So he had like Marlon Scott done by like that, like Marlon Scott, you know, like this big choir. It's awesome.
01:45:59
Speaker
We should do that for your favorite coaster. Yeah, you totally should. Is this the ITT tech commercial? Yeah, I don't know what this is. This is clearly some for profit fucking college. Education connection. No, she's making a tower out of marshmallows and toothpicks designing the next hero ride. Cleveland State University. Oh, OK. Well, you know, from from Cleveland, Idaho.
01:46:29
Speaker
participation trophy. I was going to say the same thing. I was going to say the same thing. So he was the boomers giving it to the millennials. We didn't ask for it. 2000. Shit, I got to be here. We go finally.
01:47:01
Speaker
Wow, look at that old ass panel. You know, OK, so you never see anyone spinning cotton candy anymore in these parks. No. It's always like in a bag already, and it's like, what the fuck is that? Have you had the like the like the Dr. Pepper cotton candy yet? No, they sell like a Vat 19 and on Amazon and stuff. I got that and a couple other different flavors and it tastes just like Dr. Pepper, but with cotton candy. I got to try that.
01:47:31
Speaker
It makes your fingers really red though. So just be careful. You need some rubber gloves or chopsticks or something. But it's good. It's really good. Have you ever had cotton candy grapes? Yes, I have. Those are amazing. Yeah, they're still fucking good.
Dietary Choices and Historical Preservation
01:47:51
Speaker
I bought, I've been kind of reintroduced to coffee this past year because my executive director, she's really big into coffee and she got me into it. I was never a big coffee drinker. So I bought a, you know, Carrick machine or a Carrick machine, however you say it. I bought all kinds of different flavors of hot chocolate that are candy and they have cotton candy coffee, but it wasn't very strong.
01:48:16
Speaker
But they have like creamers now. They're like roast, to be honest. It wasn't the greatest. And they have like creamers that are like, excuse me, Twix flavored. And like Snickers flavored creamer, that type of stuff. I'll let the free fall still there. So you're you're developing a caffeine addiction, huh? Yeah, pretty much. I only have two cups a day for that.
01:48:44
Speaker
One in the morning. I can't judge. I worked at Starbucks for a long time. Oh, there you go. Did I just realize that Starbucks has a really good vegetarian breakfast sandwiches? They sure do. The the spinach wrap or they have the impossible sausage ones. Yeah, the impossible is nice. I had one last week for the first time in Santa Fe and it was fantastic. Are you vegetarian? Oh, yeah, I've been vegetarian since 97.
01:49:14
Speaker
Right on. I have something called alpha gall. It's like, um, uh, the enzymes or something in meat, it just gets me really sick. And it's across the board. Like I can't eat fish or chicken or any of that stuff. So, um, I just learned to cope with it. Yep. 2011. Oh, good for you. I could, I couldn't be a vegan though. I still drink milk and I can eat eggs. Eggs for some reason don't get me sick, but you know,
01:49:42
Speaker
This guy was the like PR director for Magic Mountain for many, many years. I don't know if he still is. Andy Gallardo, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I just remember seeing him on all these things and you see his name so many times as vegan, like kind of like flex vegan right now. I'm still like strictly vegetarian, but the veganism is flex sometimes, so I don't even like
01:50:12
Speaker
I'm not real strict about it beyond no meat, you know? Gotcha. I don't do milk at all. And I don't really generally don't do cheese, but sometimes I'll do eggs. I'll do cheese on pizza. And then like, um, uh, I, I only drink milk for cereal and I used to be like a big cereal holic, but I, and now I'll, I'll get maybe two gallons every year. And, uh,
01:50:38
Speaker
You know, I'll drink something that has milk in it, but as far as milk directly, I don't drink a whole lot of just cups of milk. He was, he's a, he's an enthusiast long. Um, I believe he's the one that came up with the term hyper coaster. Really? Yeah. I think Alan was the one that, uh, dubbed the Magnum hyper coaster. Did he work at Cedar Point?
01:51:05
Speaker
No, he worked. He was just, uh, I think he might've been the public relations director or president of ACE. He had a, he was on the executive committee. I just can't remember what rule, uh, what role it was. And it was either like at media day or like before that, um, that he came up with the term. Well, this is a hyper coaster. I'm pretty sure it was him. I'd have to, um, while we're looking, I'm going to Google that and see if I, if anything comes up. Um,
01:51:33
Speaker
I'm just like, oh, so it was the equivalent of a form post, basically. Which is not surprising. It's not surprising. And this I'm not going to find it on here. Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of that like fun obscure history is not super well archived unless you want to like really dig through the archives of RRC.
01:52:03
Speaker
Yeah. In which some of it might be there, but also like, that's why I like having you share your stories here. Hey, as long as you have them documented, that's, I mean, archiving is a big part of my life. So, um,
01:52:19
Speaker
You know, that's the funny thing because people will say, you know, it's crazy that you have all that stuff. Well, I'm sure there's many, many people that have deep archives of amusement park stuff. They're either too lazy or they didn't take care of their footage and, you know, the footage deteriorated or whatever. But a big thing is people don't know how to digitize stuff. And if they did, I'm sure there would be a whole slew of stuff that nobody's ever seen.
01:52:47
Speaker
but a lot of people just don't know how to do it. Uh, shouts to my dad who's digitizing all of my old tapes cause they were part of just the family tapes. I digitize stuff for people all the time. Um, you know, not, not a amusement park stuff, but people will ask, Hey, you know, can you make this whole video into a 60 frame per second video that we can share with our family on YouTube? And super, super easy. But you know,
01:53:15
Speaker
Some preserving history like these shows, like we're watching right now. They're important. Wait, speaking of your dad digitizing tapes. No. Okay. Well, there's a story there I don't know about. Sure is. And it's not getting told on this show. Wow. We have reached the limit.
01:53:46
Speaker
That one's that one's a come to the meet up, if you want to hear that story. It looks like he's riding the coaster backwards. It kind of did. It was kind of like that. The grandma's riding the roller coaster video. Oh.
01:54:12
Speaker
What's funny is it seems like haunted house, special effects and animatronics got really, really good.
Haunted House Experiences
01:54:20
Speaker
But like, I haven't, I feel like you see these same effects in every house now. That's why if you guys are ever in Ohio and Columbus area in October, you need to do haunted hoochie. I wanted hoochie. It's, it's so real. That's where blue flashes, but it's broken.
01:54:42
Speaker
That's not surprising. It's like, it's like an 18 and up thing. I mean, they, they grab you, they scream at you, they cuss at you. He has splash of blood. I mean, it's, it's, it lasts like 40 minutes too. Do you remember all those like urban legends? I remember this as a kid, like in my, in my school it was, Oh, there's this,
01:55:05
Speaker
like a hundred story haunted house in Chicago. Oh yeah. Where they can like throw you out the windows and like, if you go to the top, you get a hundred dollars or something. Yep. There's one in Japan that I wrote in 2005 and it was the longest at the time. And it was, I mean, it was almost too much. However, uh, I went back in 2019 and it was just a shell of its former self. So that kind of sucked. But was that the one that was an old hospital? Yes.
01:55:35
Speaker
It's like three levels. Like the pre-show pre-show is terrifying too. So it's like all, it actually utilizes the whole space kind of. Oh yeah. Yeah. And it's just you and your group and you go and like, when I wrote it no five halfway through, they gave you flashlights and the flashlights are radio controlled. So you'd be going down a hallway. They shut the power of the flashlights out and then they turn it back on and there'd be a zombie in front of you. When it came back on, they do stuff like that.
01:56:02
Speaker
Oh, fuck. Yeah, it was it was it was terrifying back then. But the theming is incredible in it still to this day. But then we did. We were all bummed because it wasn't very good. And then we right next door to it was this ride through haunted house. Took us 45 minutes to go through it. Put headphones on completely in the dark and halfway through. People touch your chest and your back as you're going. You don't see them. It's all sensory. It's all about sensory, not being able to see anything.
01:56:31
Speaker
That sounds really intense. It was really strange. I was right. Do you know Jeremy? Oh my God. I can't say his last name. He's up in Chicago. Does it start with a W? And ends with a ski.
01:56:47
Speaker
Yes. Yep. Yep. Okay. Friend, uh, uh, I don't want to say friend of the show, but friend, friend of ours personally. Well, hello Jeremy for listening to us. He, he went to Japan with us in 2019 and I was riding that dark ride with him and all of a sudden he just started like yelling and screaming and I'm like, what? Cause I couldn't tell what was going on. And he's like, someone touched me. I'm like, well, that's weird. He didn't touch me. And then 30 seconds later they did that to me and we were both just like, Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. I'd fucking bet that's,
01:57:17
Speaker
Fuckin' intense. I got some really decent reviews of the rest of the guys on that trip that were writing it, and they were just like, oh my god. Like, that would never happen here. Other than Hanahuchi. And see, like, I'm not super down. I don't know. I'm a little tentative, you know?
01:57:43
Speaker
I don't like that. I went to a house that it's this one big haunted house in Detroit that they don't touch you or anything or grab you, but they'll, they launch like mannequins at you like stuff. Jesus. Yeah. It's like stuffed mannequins. So you'll be in a room and it's super dark and then like a strobe light comes on and then just as these like mannequins like fly and hit you, they look like dead bodies. Wow.
01:58:16
Speaker
Oh, what happened? Oh, Oh yeah. He was there for that. It defaulted to hosting cause my connection got poor. That's fine. Hey, that's the WCW champion. He did a whole a coaster honeymoon with Courtney Cox. They went to all kinds of parks. Nice.
01:58:41
Speaker
He seems like a cool dude when he's not having his neck stabbed by a fucking insane wrestler. He was in one of Rob's early videos too, from this day. I completely believe that. Rob seems like he would milk something like that. You know what he did before he got into video games?
01:59:08
Speaker
What? He was a merch guy for the band Oingo Boingo. Yeah. Like he toured with Oingo Bongo. I think he's listening to one of the records. That's what he told me years and years and years ago. That was Denny Elfman's man.
01:59:25
Speaker
But is that so like not to discredit the story, but like whenever you hear stories like that, you always kind of wonder like what all the details were kind of like, uh, I don't want to mention his name, but the guy who claimed to be like BFFs with Bert, uh, Kreischner. Yeah. And then it turned and then it, and then he was like working for the show and like,
01:59:51
Speaker
he would travel around with them and then it finds out that he was just stalking them. I heard about this. There's Jeff Johnson back here in the blue A shirt. Oh yeah, sure is. Yeah. I still, we're, we're, I still chat with him, hang out with him whenever I'm out West. When David left the PR position of race, that's who I stepped in right behind him.
02:00:17
Speaker
David seemed nice. He was super nice. He was very down to earth. I didn't know about his, uh, other career. And, um, I was heading to no coaster with someone from Kings Island back in the day. And someone asked me about it and I said, well, I have no idea. So they took out their blackberry and looked it up and here's heck. We got proof.
02:00:48
Speaker
Wait, what else to tell? I was going to say, you can tell him this footage too, that this was before they trimmed it. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Definitely. Cause it comes to a full stop nowadays, but rewind a second. What Sean? What do you mean? How about David? Yeah. If you, if you don't feel comfortable. No, he was a porn star. Oh, I could see that. He was a gay porn star. Yeah. Okay.
02:01:18
Speaker
but it's a specific type of give a shit about that. No, I don't think so. Okay. I didn't know. I mean, I was friends with them for a couple of years before. I mean,
02:01:31
Speaker
before I found out about it. And then I saw him at Cedar Point once and hung out with him a little bit and it didn't bother me at all. But, you know, it was funny hearing somebody in industry recite the title of his videos, but, um, he had like, did like ACE, like, was that related? I don't think so, but it wouldn't surprise me if he was just like, Hey, I'm going to move, move away from there.
02:02:01
Speaker
I think that's Kikulani that's writing the Asian woman that was sitting there with her arms up. She was like the executive producer for all these shows. Okay. She still do stuff like this? I have no idea. I mean, I, I haven't talked to her since a couple of years after, uh, extreme rides when that, that show was over, but I got to know her through several of these shoots. She was awesome. I mean, did these,
02:02:30
Speaker
These shows made people enthusiasts a lot of for sure. Yeah. Uh, that, that statement makes Ben and I feel both very seen. Well, especially to like, yep. Kiki Lonnie, there was her name. I mean, I remember going to libraries and like, there weren't a whole lot of roller coaster books. There'd be like a science book with a picture of a roller coaster.
02:02:56
Speaker
Yeah. And like the shows were the only way to get POVs and see footage and stuff. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. It was, it was so exciting to when I'd find out one of these shows, I would record them all. And then when I had the chance to be on a couple of them, I was just like, Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. This is going to be awesome. You know? Yeah. And then when, when you're standing at a urinal and you can't take a pee because somebody wants to talk to you about it,
02:03:25
Speaker
No, I'm just joking. That never happens. Well, then you know you've made it, Sean. That's what I think that means. Well, you know, no joke. I was, you know, I was taking a leak, too much information, but at the front bathrooms at Cedar Point before I went in and as I was staying there, I heard somebody behind me come up to me and say, I thought I recognized that head.
02:03:46
Speaker
And that's not something you want to hear when you're standing at a urinal. Number one, I'm like, what the hell? And they were just talking about my haircut and it was somebody I hadn't seen like in 20 years. So I'm like, yeah, I'll talk to you outside. You know, but, uh, yeah, really weird. It's, it's, I was a little relieved that that wasn't just some coaster rando.
02:04:10
Speaker
It was a coaster fanatic, but it wasn't like somebody that like random that just said, I, I, I just, I, it kind of froze me. I'm like, did I just hear that? You know, but, uh, I mean, ground rule. If you see me in a men's men's room, please talk to me. Yeah. I I've had that happen before.
02:04:32
Speaker
I had a friend who wanted to chat with me and she didn't want to chat with me around my friends. So as I was in the bathroom, she walked in there and I was like, yeah, you got to get out of here. You're going to get thrown out. What the fuck? Yeah. Yeah. No, don't do that shit. Don't and don't ambush somebody when they're on the way out either. Yeah.
02:04:56
Speaker
And please, please, I know you're out there. I'm just not into this, but please, please don't be a stall talker. Oh no, hell no. People do that to me at work too. And it's annoying. It's just so awkward. And yeah, I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to talk to you. And because you're talking to me now, there's a good chance I'm not going to want to talk to you when I'm done. So, you know,
02:05:22
Speaker
Yeah. Cause it's always like an awkward transition from like the pre and the post urinal conversation. Yeah. Or like you, or like you wash your hands and then you leave and then they're like standing waiting at the door and it's just like, uh, you know, um, I was in Sacramento like in 2017 for work and our host took us to this really nice restaurant in downtown and she said,
02:05:50
Speaker
And forgive me if I mention this on another episode, but she said, um, Hey, you need to go wash your hands. And I'm like, well, hands look clean. I'll go wash my hands. And I, it was a really nice bathroom. And like the, the sink was like a waterfall and I washed my hands and I'm like, okay. And I walk out and she's like, well, what'd you think? And I'm very confused. And I said,
02:06:12
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah, it was a nice bath. I mean, it smelled nice and she says, wow, you're difficult to impress. And I didn't know what I meant. So at the end of the night, my coworker, he goes into the bathroom and he comes out and he's like, dude, have you washed your hands at the bathroom? I'm like, yes, I did. What's the big deal? Go in there right now. And then she goes into the women's restroom and as I'm washing my hands, I look up.
02:06:34
Speaker
You're looking at the women in the women's restroom. It's not a mirror. It's a piece of glass and it's mirrored to look exactly like the men's. I mean, you can't see any of the stalls or anything. It's just this thing. But women are watching you wash your hands. And, you know, dudes sometimes don't wash their hands. So it's a good way to make sure that, you know, you're being clean. But the reason I didn't notice that before is because there was nobody on the other side.
02:07:01
Speaker
But then that brings up the question, why didn't I see my own reflection and notice it? You know, but, um, yeah, little things like that, you know, it makes a really cool, but I wouldn't want every bathroom to be like that. I've seen that, um, sometimes gay bars will have urinals with like a low wall. So you're just looking at someone eye to eye, like face to face as your pain.
02:07:29
Speaker
Dude, the, I don't know if they're still like this, but, uh, the first time I ever was like on a big coaster trip in Texas, Texas was like 95 or 98, somewhere around there. And my buddy Bill comes out of the, uh, the bathroom and he's like, go in there and act like you're taking a shit.
02:07:46
Speaker
I said, what? And he goes, just go in there and get in a stall. And you go in and the stall wall is about the level of your head. That's the top of it, right next to the urinal. So somebody is going to be standing right next to you, taking a whiz and you can see everything right there. I was just like, what the hell? Like why even bother with the wall, the rest of the wall?
02:08:11
Speaker
in case they wanted to try to do a trick shot and splash you from behind.
02:08:17
Speaker
I remember the very first time I ever played a show live with my band back in the 90s and I was a nervous wreck because I was the vocalist and the guitar player at the same time and I mean, it was just a thrash, you know, slash death band. So it was just me screaming. So yeah, I didn't care what anybody thought about that. But like I had to like poo like right before the show. And I'm like, guys, I got to go to the bathroom. And it was one of these really shitty club bathrooms.
02:08:41
Speaker
with no privacy, you're in there on the pedestal and people are washing their hands right next to you and you're just like, ah, well, they're going to see me up on stage in a second. You know, it was just very, very uncomfortable.
02:08:57
Speaker
I know the type you're talking about where like every surface is covered in with stickers. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Including like the hand towel or the paper towels themselves.
Bathroom Humor and Hotel Horrors
02:09:12
Speaker
Yep. The knobs for the sink, you know, all that. Sometimes the top of the tank is immaculate. Yeah, exactly. Those those tanks are reserved for upper deckers, so I'm just saying.
02:09:26
Speaker
You know exactly what's going on in there because it'll be like three pairs of feet. But yeah, there's one watching that show, man. That was a lot of fun. I was going to say, those are the types of bathrooms you see at Magic Mountain. Oh, man, don't even get me started. There's one that's by Revolution kind of in the front of the park.
02:09:55
Speaker
that I was leaving the park and I'm like, I think my, like my hotel was like an hour away. So I'm like, I better go now. And I go into the stall and someone literally had taken shit and wrote the word shit on the wall. And I'm just telling you this right now. It wasn't
02:10:18
Speaker
a single pass. They went over it. I mean, I, I, I wish I had like a proper cell phone because I would have taken a picture. I tried to get her. I'm like, go into that last stall. Why just don't, you won't go to the bathroom. Just go in there and tell me what you see. And they were all afraid to do it. It was, it was, it was terrible. It was terrible. That's better. As a matter of fact, I think I even,
02:10:46
Speaker
You know like when parks send you like surveys after you leave the park, that might've been one of the first online surveys I ever took and I mentioned it in the survey.
02:11:02
Speaker
And my buddy Skyler, we were at a Super 8 or Motel 6, some hotel and real cheap by Carowinds. And we had this terrible room and there was like, it looked like crap was on the wall. So like he tweeted to Super 8, I don't stay here, there's crap on the wall. And like,
02:11:22
Speaker
Like the executives like instantly private messaged him or like, can we call you right now? And he was like, Oh my God, I caused a stink. So he took the tweet down. Oh, I would have left that up. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Can we get the presidential suite? Oh, you don't have one. Well, how do you intend to play us?
02:11:48
Speaker
My favorite was, uh, that enhance COVID clean scam during the pandemic where they would put that comes in a zip lock now. Yep. And they put that like big piece of tape on the door. Oh yeah. And I stayed at the, the Hampton in by six flags during that time. And like, I remember like you walked in and then immediately there was a skid mark and piss on the toilet seat. Yeah.
02:12:17
Speaker
Either that was left from the last guest or the, you know, housekeeping had an emergency. But this shit happened again when Craig and I say this summer, this past summer, it was the same fucking thing, walked into the room and the toilet was dirty. And then I had to like call the front desk and be like, hey, our toilets dirty. So then they had to like send a guy up who was just like, uh, you have a dirty toilet? I'm like, yeah.
02:12:42
Speaker
And he just like walked in and scrubbed it. He's like, uh, he's like, you're good. I asked to get a different room. Um, it might've been in Tennessee. Uh, they, they, they, they changed the, you know,
02:12:59
Speaker
They did the beds, but they didn't do the bathroom. And it looked like somebody had shaved their junk over the toilet and just, they didn't, they flushed it, but they didn't clean the rim or any of that stuff. There was just all this hair all over it. And, um,
02:13:14
Speaker
Um, I was like, yeah, um, somebody didn't do the bathroom and they came up with a plunger. I'm like, no, no, no. Like it's not clogged. There's something else. And then they were just like, okay, it'll be clean. You know, when you check it, if you want us to clean it now. And I was getting ready to bail. So they cleaned it when I was gone. Excuse me, front desk. Can somebody get the pubes out of this bath? Yeah.
02:13:43
Speaker
Yeah, excuse me. No, no, I'm not expecting a concierge. No, no, no, I just I'm hoping there's not shit on the toilet when I walk in. You know, in 2005, when I went to Japan for the first time, some of the rooms, they charge you per person.
02:14:04
Speaker
So we're like, oh, we'll just two of us will check in and then we'll leave and then one of them will give key to, you know, our friend Jim and he'll go in and get in the room. So we had a little system for some of those cheaper rooms we stayed at. Well, uh, the, I stayed, I slept on like this little cot thing. It was comfortable as hell. Then there was two extra beds, but then like,
02:14:25
Speaker
or one bed. And then my buddy Jim, who was the one that was sneaking into the room, moved the blanket and there was blood on the mattress. And so we called down to the front desk and we were like, there's blood on the mattress, but they didn't understand. So they came up and the Japanese word for blood is chi. So we showed them the chi and they're like, and they came back with a bandaid.
02:14:52
Speaker
And my friend Matt was like, he was like, not my chi, not my chi, not my chi. And then they finally just moved us to a different room, I think. But the whole time we had gyms ducking down in the bathtub, so they wouldn't know we had a third person in there.
02:15:10
Speaker
Dude, I got, so when I was in Rome, so like, um, Europe seems to do that a lot too, where they charge per the person. And, um, so I had a friend of mine was in, fuck, I don't know. She's like a travel writer. She was in like Jordan or like,
02:15:28
Speaker
She was traveling all around Eastern Europe, so she met me in Rome and was going to crash with me for a couple days. I didn't check her in. There was one of those small hotels where you have to walk past the front desk no matter where you go. She walked in and her and I walked back and forth, said hi to the people, were really friendly to the staff. Then on the end of the fifth day, I was at work. Then apparently, they called the room
02:15:58
Speaker
And they thought, and they were like, who's in the room? We only have one person registered. Like, who are you? You need to bring your passport down and this and that. Cause I guess they get fined if they don't register every guest or something. And then like, they call me and it was almost like, because they were in very, you know, a very Italian and like yelling in Italian, um,
02:16:21
Speaker
It almost seemed like they thought I was like trafficking somebody. It was like, do you know her? I'm like, yeah. I'm like, that's my friend. She's staying with me. And she's like, well, she's not registered. I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm sorry. Like, I don't know what you want us to do. God. Yeah.
02:16:42
Speaker
Well, that's what you get for trying to save 20 euro. No, they charge her 80 euro a night. Oh, fuck what? And so they were like, apparently they were like, OK, so like she had to go to the front desk and then like they were like, OK, so you were here since Saturday. That's five nights and they made her like pay on the spot. Oh, boy. So I guess five days is the limit then.
02:17:12
Speaker
Well, no, they, well, she was leaving that day anyway. It just happened to be like the morning she was leaving, but yeah, it was a pain. And then I fell back. Cause it was like a work trip. I'm like, well, shit. Cause our, our company had like a negotiated rate and everything. And I, I felt bad. Nothing really happened.
02:17:33
Speaker
I remember we had in was 1998 coaster con was at Kennywood and there was I think three of us staying in a room and by the end of the second night, I think we had eight or nine. And it was just, it was just too chaotic. I, at one point I ended up getting a room by myself. I'm like, I, this is just too many people.
02:17:57
Speaker
Yeah. How do you end up with eight or nine in one room? There was somebody sleeping in the tub. Um, somebody was sleeping right outside the bathroom. Two people on each bed or, you know, there was two beds. Somebody was sleeping in the like recline, the little chair in the corner. Um, it was just in the mornings, it was just,
02:18:18
Speaker
way too much. And I'm, I'm glad I'm past those days, man, because, uh, that, that is, I don't know how so many years I would, I mean, you know, everybody was strapped for cash back then and everything. And you were just trying to make the most out of a coaster trip. But I look back at some of those days going, God, what the hell were we thinking? Yeah. I don't think even at our brokest and youngest Ben with our friend group, we ever crammed more than like,
02:18:48
Speaker
four heads into a room, four or five heads, maybe. Yeah, even whoever whoever was riding in the van basically. Wow, those were the days. Yep, but not no way, because like, yeah. Oh, man, I can't even imagine being like, hey, can you scoot? Can you move? I need to open the window. Yeah.
02:19:17
Speaker
I slept on a balcony of, uh, one place in Pennsylvania once. Like, like we were like the 17th floor up and there just wasn't enough room. So there was like a lawn chair on this balcony. I just got a blanket and slept out there all night. Woke up just completely moist because of the dew. Oh shit. I lost audio. Um,
02:19:39
Speaker
I was going to say the worst is it was like deconstructing the bed where like two people would sleep on the box spring and then two people would sleep on the mattress. Uh, uh, no, thanks. Oh, box spring. Fuck that. I'd rather sleep on the floor. Yeah, for sure. That seems.
02:20:06
Speaker
Like an idea only our one buddy could have had been. Yep. You want the box spring? You take the box spring friend. I don't need a sliver of mattress. I'll take carpet. Anyway. I, uh,
02:20:36
Speaker
I think, you know what? I think this is the fifth time I've been on this show. Nice. Is that right? I did a two parter at the beginning. I did the coaster 99 episode. I did the one I just did, I don't know, a month or so ago. Yeah. Number five. That's crazy. You're the, you're the first and only member of the five timers club. All right.
02:21:04
Speaker
I'll gladly take that title over the doofus that slammed into a back of a street cleaner. Well, you know, that just means that we're going to be like, yeah, we're the we're like the unofficial second and third over at Sean's channel. Yeah, exactly. Oh, boy.
02:21:31
Speaker
Well, all right, this has been fun. That was a fun show. Oh, yeah. Well, and again, this happened very quick. What you asked me tonight.
02:21:42
Speaker
Yeah, we'll have to do some more of these. Cause it's fun to get your input. And I love hearing the stories and having you go, Oh, Hey, that's that person. And that's that person. I can, that's the cool thing about those shows. Cause I was friends with a lot of those people in the shows. And then if you guys do extreme rides 2001, that was the one I did for millennium force. I remember that one. Yeah. So actually that folder I sent you just browse through that. Cause there might be some stuff in there you haven't even seen yet.
02:22:10
Speaker
Yes, I think we'll be pulling from that. We'll source from that and maybe we'll have you be like a permanent guest fixture for when we're doing these commentaries. Let me know because I can always bring my microphone when I'm on tour, you know, for work and stuff. So.
02:22:29
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's always a good time because, you know, you're saying these main enthusiasts, I think, you know, that's, that's kind of a lot of how I came to get into coasters of seeing these videos and being like, dude, I need to go there and try that ride. Oh yeah. So those shows were, they're still important, I think, but you know, um,
02:22:53
Speaker
I think it's funny that the younger generation, it looks like some of these old POVs that we recorded back in the day and they're like, oh, they're so shaky. Well, we didn't have the benefit of GoPro and floating lenses and stuff like that back then. The camera was 200 pounds and it needed a 300 pound structure to be maneuvered onto the ride.
Filming Challenges and Audio Innovations
02:23:19
Speaker
Yeah, those like if you ever see the photos of the old video contraptions that had the mount to cameras, it looked insane. There was one in the very first issue of roller coaster I ever got read in 92 and it was they hired this. He was an Acer, but he would do all the POVs like Ace would make these VHS tapes of every coaster con.
02:23:40
Speaker
I think I have them all, but they would do these POVs and they would literally take one of those big ass VHS camcorders, the big bulky ones, and just duct tape it to the front of the car. So there's an image in one of those roller coaster magazines, I'll have to find it, of like this big ass camcorder and this guy just layering duct tape and all kinds of stuff around it so it doesn't fall off. There was no mounts or anything like that. Yeah. I remember in one of the
02:24:10
Speaker
One of those DVDs, those like coaster, what was it? America's Greatest Coaster Thrills. Yeah. We're like in one of the videos, one of the videos at the end, the camera like falls off. I think it's on like Cyclone or something. Oh yeah. Yeah. They have it like a bonus footage. It is, it is Cyclone.
02:24:26
Speaker
Yeah, and then do you remember like the wild thing POV was all blurry and all that stuff it was like different colors and I ended up I remember talking I had sent an email to the producers of that and Saying because the mean streak POV they use was actually from Cedar Point It wasn't one that they were recorded and they're like, oh, you know
02:24:47
Speaker
That's wild that you, you picked up on that and they're like, do you want to know why we had the, the, to mask the wild thing in one other video? I was like, no. And they said the camera quality was so poor, but the camera kept on going in and out. They had to just put all these effects to disguise it. So yeah, I mean, that's how you did it back then.
02:25:09
Speaker
Well, that makes sense. Yeah. Cause I remember we did a commentary on that one and it was like, well, what's the, that's a fucking editing choice. Like, yeah, everybody thinks they did it for the quote unquote 3d effect, but that particular 3d effect is called pulpit. Sure. I'm probably pronouncing that wrong. But, um, anything that moves across the screen, going left to right goes out of the screen. Anything going the other direction goes into the screen, the depth.
02:25:37
Speaker
So there always has to be that motion. And then when you're doing a POV video going forward, it doesn't work. The left rail, if you look and watch in 3D, was kind of out of the screen and the right rail was going back. It was all weird. It doesn't work that way. But there were some music videos, like Skid Row did a music video.
02:25:59
Speaker
that way in that format and the good thing is you don't if you have sunglasses and just took one lens out that works for that effect you don't need like the red and blue things or anything like that but nobody takes nobody takes advantage of that anymore what i was wondering so that original one was actually in 3d
02:26:17
Speaker
The first two were in 3D, but they weren't recorded in 3D. They were just 2D that had some graphics that went left to right and made it look like it was 3D. It wasn't shot with two cameras or anything like that. It was just more of a gimmick than anything. There was some music videos shot that way, but those America's greatest things, they just basically used that as a marketing thing. It didn't really take advantage of that system.
02:26:45
Speaker
I was going to say, because I remember getting it from the library and then buying 3D glasses and not noticing anything. So it was the same tape, right? You wouldn't notice a difference unless you're wearing the glasses. Yeah, exactly. And the glasses weren't like the red and blue ones. One was completely clear and one was slightly darker.
02:27:07
Speaker
I just it just and what that does is it delays the light to the right eye and that's where you get the the convincing depth of 3d if there's a left to right image or right to you know vice versa it doesn't work with a forward image and that's where they screwed up i think but
02:27:25
Speaker
Yeah, there's all kinds of video i'm sure on youtube if you have those Whole-fitch classes they work when they're when the video is designed to do that. You don't need two lenses for it or anything But it just doesn't work for a forward motion type of thing. And that's what that's where they screwed up Interesting yeah, i'm a big 3d geek too. I got a 3d tv everything I still have so
02:27:56
Speaker
Remember the 3D phones? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I didn't have one of those. I have a Nintendo 3DS that has a camera built into it so I could take 3D photos. But I mean, I haven't fired that thing up in a couple of years. The new iPhones, the iPhone 15 Pro Max, you can record 3D with that in spatial. I can't remember the actual way it does it, but I've never, I haven't had any success getting it from the phone in 3D to my TV. So I got to figure out how to do that.
02:28:28
Speaker
It works for VR, I guess, too, but I don't know how to do that. Oh, yeah, I was going to say they're probably going to be. The VR thing is going to be interesting, like the like Coaster POVs will be kind of fun in VR. Oh, I want I have the PS VR, too. And you can watch YouTube 360 videos in VR already on YouTube. There's a whole.
02:28:50
Speaker
I mean, coaster force does a ton of them and, um, and you can just watch, like you can sit on your couch, put the VR headset and look around your entire room and you see every angle of like if you were riding on the coaster. And I know that you can do it with like no limits and stuff like that, but, um, yeah, technology is crazy right now, man. I remember I tried VR porn.
02:29:14
Speaker
I would, you know, I would be too afraid to be honest. The video didn't work. So it was just like two vaginas in my eye, like each pie. You know, uh, someone asked me if I have 3d porn for the 3d TV and I don't because, uh, I mean that would bring a whole new meaning to coming at you, you know, but it's just, uh, I don't know. There's certain things I'm a little,
02:29:43
Speaker
I'd be a little bit too afraid to see in 3d. I've just been like, oh boy, you know, but, um, I used to record 3d video. I had a system for my high eight camcorder that I took to Texas in 98. It was this big, bulky double lens thing. You, you screwed into the front of the camera. So somewhere I have POV of 3d POV of a Texas giant, um, shockwave,
02:30:10
Speaker
in the mine ride, I think, at Six Flags Over Texas. But I would not know how to make that to 3D in today's standards, you know. But it worked back in the day.
02:30:28
Speaker
interesting. So it was like a rigged up Hi8 camera? Yeah, it was like a Hi8, a Sony Hi8 camcorder. And then it was a thing that you fastened to the front. It was just basically two mirrors. And then it had like this arm that you fastened from the camera to the lens for extra support. Then you just plug in your
02:30:49
Speaker
cables right directly your output your input to the camera from the lens and it had a battery in it but it had a depth control and then to view it you had to have these special glasses that were wired that were in sync with the screen so that it would be a left right image so fast
02:31:06
Speaker
that, um, there would be like a light flicker, but it would, you'd have to watch it on like a real TV. This is for like HD TVs came out. They don't work on those TVs, but it was a system that worked. And, uh, um, I have that somewhere. I just don't know if it's valuable for anything. Cause it, you had to zoom in slightly too. So it was kinda, it wasn't the best, but it worked. Remember, uh, Google, Google glass. Yeah. I never tried it though.
02:31:38
Speaker
Isn't that what's like the Apple vision thing that's out now? That looks pretty cool. The only thing that sucks about the Apple vision pro thing though, is that it doesn't work. It's, it's a, what do you call it? It's like a local operating system. So I could see the benefit of, of that being you could use it on like your Mac book.
02:32:03
Speaker
and then have like an infinite amount of like, you know, 3d screens. You could have like, you know, like a video editing screen and then like a web browser all off your Mac book, but it doesn't, it only gives you a single screen. If you're mirroring your laptop. Oh, okay. Which seems kind of dumb. Cause then it's basically just like a phone. It's like phone apps and stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
02:32:29
Speaker
I know the the psvr2 is strange because when you put it on It reads your room and knows like what like if you're walking around and knows that it'll tell you you're about to hit the wall because it maps out your room but when you put it on there's two lenses in the front of it and It it shows your room in full 3d through those lenses. So you're seeing
02:32:53
Speaker
your room like you would without the helmet, but it's slightly grainy and it's through the head unit. But it's so strange to just walk in your room in 3D with a helmet on. Like seeing your room in 3D through a device is really strange. Yeah.
02:33:10
Speaker
That seems like a weird sensation for sure. Yeah, but it's all built for safety. So it reads your room and knows like, hey, there's a cabinet over here. Don't get too close. Your couch is back here. If you go too far, you're going to fall behind it. But, you know, it's just amazing technology and it's just so immersive.
02:33:38
Speaker
I, yeah, I'm interested in trying one of those, like the Apple vision, but also, you know, what is it? Like $4,000. Yeah. It's crazy up there. Yeah. So I would love this. I would love to try it out and see what the hype's about though. You know, that's what I was saying. Like, like, like you were saying, Ben, I think like there's some cool,
02:34:06
Speaker
practicality for certain applications. Yeah. I just don't see it being a. I don't know, you're just like hanging out in your house with the clock with goggles on. It's just. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it looks like my eyes, though, so. Right. It looks like I'm staring past you.
02:34:37
Speaker
Cause that's exactly what society needs. Yeah. You saw that though, right, Sean? What's that? That like, it has a display on the front that shows like the person wearing its eyes and it's. Yeah. They're all like, like blueish, like a glow or something behind it. Yeah. Yeah. And it looks, it really looks like they're just kind of like hauntingly staring right through somebody. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like you're, I mean,
02:35:09
Speaker
I'm sure like over time people would get used to it. Cause I'm sure, I mean, like the first time somebody had a cell phone, people were just like, what the hell's that? You know, how, how weird, you know? But, uh, yeah, that's, that's going to be a weird one. I, I for one, welcome our new technological age of antisocial behavior.
02:35:40
Speaker
I feel like the, whatever generation is a kid now is going to be the generation that rejects technology. Oh, I think they are. I mean, a lot of younger ones are in the line of records, for instance, you know, um,
02:35:59
Speaker
Things like, and not, and mainly a lot of them are in there for, oh, I'll just collect them, you know, cause it's a thing to collect, but a lot of them are realizing, oh crap, these sound better than an iTunes record, you know? Um, I just, uh, I,
02:36:15
Speaker
So the last time I had COVID was a couple of years ago and I was stuck at home. So I wired my kind of man cave, my surround sound system to include Dolby
Immersive Audio and Music in Atmos
02:36:24
Speaker
Outmost. So I have speakers. Oh shit. Yeah, coming from above. So main reason I got that is because I'm a big porcupine tree and Stephen Wilson fan and he started releasing albums in that format.
02:36:36
Speaker
and like bands like Tesseract. So I, when you listen to them on Blu-ray and Dolby Atmos, when they're mixed properly, it's a whole different learning, like it's a whole different audio experience. Cause you're now in like this bubble of sound. And, uh, just in the mail today, I got, uh, Landis Morissette's jagged little pill mixed in Atmos and I haven't listened to it yet. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. And then, uh, coming up as Fleetwood max, uh, rumors. Classic. Yeah.
02:37:05
Speaker
I didn't know they were releasing so much in Atmos. That's cool. It's got a whole, there's a whole catalog. I mean, studios now are like Devin Townsend, just his whole recording studio. He now has it with Atmos so he can write and actually record an Atmos instead of just mixing it. And it's, it's like, uh, it's like the VR version of audio. It's just, it's a really unique type of way listening to music.
02:37:33
Speaker
So I definitely support it. I've only got to hear it sampled at like a speaker show. Do you guys have the Apple earbuds?
02:37:48
Speaker
I don't like, like the AirPods or yeah. Like, like the, I don't know what generation they are now or the ones before it because they, um, if you have the ones that have, um, what is space special spatial audio, I can't even say it. Um, there's a whole slew of albums mixed in their version of Atmos. And so like, for instance, I listened to Fleetwood Mac dreams.
02:38:15
Speaker
It's like my favorite song. And it's a completely different experience because when you look to the right, Stevie Nix's vocals stay as if they were right in front of you. But they stay at one point in the room. And like the drums are around you. So when you walk around, the drums are now behind you. And if you stop, they go back in the place. Same with the vocals. It's really cool experience. It makes the vintage records like
02:38:42
Speaker
Billy Idol records, when they mix them that way, it's a completely different learning experience or listening experience rather. That's pretty cool. I gotta fucking try that.
02:38:57
Speaker
Yeah. Just look it up there. I mean, there's all kinds of records that are even a brand new records that have, uh, an atmos itunes version for those special earbuds. And they, it's, it's, it's, it takes a little, little while to get used to, cause it's, it's completely different. Every track is in its own space, but they, but it works. It all works. Yeah. Give it a shot.
02:39:27
Speaker
I'm going to have to see if I can demo those somehow because that sounds pretty fucking cool. Yeah, it's a really cool experience and not a lot of people are talking about it. I mean, at least none of the people I hang out with. But my dad's a big audio file, so I got a little bit of that from him. Yeah, my dad as well. Yeah. Oh.
02:39:50
Speaker
Well, cool. How long have we been talking like three hours or something? You know, whatever, whatever is required for a podcast. I think we, we've hit that mark. That's awesome. He goes by so fast. Uh, you know, Hey, I'm glad I think, you know, it's, it's just good that you enjoy coming on here. Oh, it worked perfectly for today. And, and, uh, I'm sorry, I didn't bring any fireworks like neighbors fighting and throwing shit around, but you know, Hey,
02:40:21
Speaker
That's right. That's why we watched the discovery channel show this time. There we go. There we go. There we go. All right. Well, um, I guess, yeah, let's, let's call it. Um, I'm good. Ben, you got anything else? Oh, do we lose him again to the Texas? Nope. Well, then, uh,
02:40:52
Speaker
I'm going to assume that's a no from Ben then. Well, uh, yeah, thanks. Thanks for being here, Sean. Oh, I think he just texted us. Hold on. What did he say? Uh, wait, can you hear me now? Oh, there you are. Okay. God, I was talking so much too and I didn't realize it wasn't going through. Oh no, we haven't heard you in a couple of minutes.
02:41:19
Speaker
Oh, so you were mentioning the neighbors fighting in the room because you mentioned the air pods. Oh yeah. And I was like, I wonder if, I mean, clearly that fart picked up and the neighbors picked up. So it sounds like you're in the room. Yeah, there you go. Hey, that's, that's true. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't impressed that you, I mean, you could hear the fight.
02:41:45
Speaker
You know, when you were when you were quiet, you could hear like in between you talk and you hear shit bouncing around like things. I'm like, oh, my God. Oh, that's great. You like you listen with the Apple Vision Pro. It's like, oh, my God, I thought I was about to get the the door was about to get kicked in. And
02:42:14
Speaker
All right. All right. Cool. I got here because I got an early morning appointment with the insurance or the adjuster coming out and checking out the
Conclusion and Gratitude
02:42:22
Speaker
car. Yeah. Let's book that up for you. Yeah. Well, I find out if it's total tomorrow. So we'll see. Best wishes. Glad you're all right. Thank you very much. Absolutely. And we will we will do another one of these commentaries with you again soon because I'm always a blast. I can't wait.
02:42:43
Speaker
All right, Ben, you got anything else? No, I'm all good. Perfect. Well, thanks again, Sean, and thank you all for listening. And until next time, you know the deal. Your favorite.