Release Date: April 4, 2025

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Jim Hill and Eric Hersey return with more Epic Universe updates, rumors, and retro fun. From the Universal Portal Tour and Express Pass prices to Ghostbusters speculation and a throwback to Universal’s 1968 Mardi Gras event – this episode covers it all.

Eric’s Surprise Trip to Universal During Blackout Dates

Eric and his family were gifted a last-minute timeshare trip to Central Florida for Easter week. Unfortunately, their Power Passes are blacked out during the exact dates they’ll be there, leaving them with only April 12 and 13 to squeeze in a visit.

Jim’s Delayed Visit to Epic Universe

Jim shares that Nancy is scheduled for hip surgery on May 20 – just two days before the park opens. With flying and long drives off the table during recovery, Jim is likely postponing his first Epic Universe visit until September, possibly during IAPA.

Epic Universe Portal Tour Coming to Five Cities

Universal’s hype-building campaign hits the road with immersive Portal Tour setups featuring Kronos Tower photo ops, props, characters, and a collectible passport. Stops include:

• Orlando, FL – April 6 at Lake Eola Park
• Atlanta, GA – April 13 at Atlantic Station
• Philadelphia, PA – April 20 at Penn’s Landing
• New York, NY – April 27 at Flatiron Plaza
• Chicago, IL – May 4 at Pioneer Court

Permit Filed for Rip Ride Rockit Demolition

Universal filed a permit labeled “Project 902” that hints at demolition and reconstruction at the Rockit site. While no official confirmation has been made, the language in the permit strongly suggests a major change is coming.

Ghostbusters Attraction Rumors

Fan speculation is swirling around a potential Ghostbusters-themed attraction replacing Rip Ride Rockit. Reddit and forum posts mention a vertical layout and the possibility of reusing the New York backlot theming for a ghost-busting shooter or dark ride. Jim and Eric discuss the likelihood – and whether Fast & Furious is the more realistic option.

Monster Makeup Experience Now Bookable at Epic Universe

The Dark Universe land is offering guests the chance to become a classic Universal Monster using real prosthetics and special effects makeup. At $149.99, the package includes the transformation, a collectible lanyard, themed box, and photo ops.

Jim questions whether this experience will last or suffer the same fate as past attempts like Disney’s Pirates League. Eric compares the time and money commitment to face painting and Bippity Boppity Boutique.

Express Pass Pricing and Ride List Revealed

Universal confirmed the pricing tiers and eligible rides for Epic Universe Express and Express Unlimited. Prices start at $89.99 and may increase on peak days. Eligible rides include:

• Stardust Racers
• Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge
• Curse of the Werewolf
• Hiccup’s Wing Gliders

Drone Show Uncertainty for CineSational

Following an FAA suspension tied to a drone incident in Orlando, Epic Universe’s planned drone elements – including flying dragons over Isle of Berk – may be delayed or canceled entirely.

Jim notes that Disney encountered similar drone setbacks, with examples like the Quinjet project and Fantasyland dragon. Operational challenges and legal constraints often ground these high-tech spectacles.

History Segment: Mardi Gras in Mexico (1968)

Jim walks through the history of Universal’s 1968 after-hours “Mardi Gras in Mexico” event – a bold experiment in entertainment that included Aztec princesses, tequila tastings, and aerial performers.

The event featured:

• A recreated Mexican village marketplace
• A sacrificial princess stage show
• The Papalanta Flyers – performers who dive from a 100-foot pole as a ritual

Jack Benny’s Vault and the Creature Photo-Op

Universal originally planned a walkthrough attraction based on comedian Jack Benny’s vault, complete with gags from his TV show. When the vault concept was scrapped, they replaced it with a photo-op featuring the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The illusion used a curtained window and well-timed movement for a practical jump scare.

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Step back in time to late 2011 for a live, nostalgic walk-through of Epcot with theme park experts Len Testa and Jim Hill. In this classic episode, the duo explores the transition spaces of Future World and the rich cultural details of World Showcase, peeling back the layers of Disney history to uncover fascinating “what-if” concepts, abandoned ride designs, and the corporate sponsorship struggles that shaped the park we know today. From the monolithic slabs of Leave a Legacy to forgotten pavilions and unbuilt roller coasters, this casual stroll offers a masterclass in Disney Imagineering history.

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Epcot’s Future World in 2011: Lost Concepts and Disney What-Ifs Transcript

Len Testa: Hi, this is Len Testa in Epcot with Jim Hill. We’re doing another episode of our unofficial guide Disney Dish with Jim Hill podcast. It’s a beautiful sunny day in Orlando. It’s about 75 degrees outside. Sun is shining. We’re getting ready to walk through Future World Plaza, the very beginning, the very entrance of Epcot. You guys can hear some background music. Yeah, that’s beautiful. Epcot’s my favorite park, Jim. How are you doing today?

Jim Hill: I’m in Epcot. I meant to share your enthusiasm for this park. I love this park. It’s the world’s greatest theme park, And plus we’ve got food and wine going on here, too.

Len Testa: All right, that helps. Liquor definitely helps Epcot. All right, so we’re going to walk through the plaza here. And as we go through, we’re coming up on, we just got past the security entrance, which is nice. It’s actually such a slow day here that they’re not doing a… They’re just kind of letting people pass. So we’re walking up now, we’re passing the stone monoliths, the Libid legacy tiles. If you ever want to have some fun, ask Sam Genoway what he thinks of these things.

Jim Hill: I can imagine. I can imagine. Now these are… This is honestly probably the last project that Imagineer John Hench worked on for the company. I know the joke, know, the effective… The faces here are everyone who died walking around World Showcase Lagoon. But it’s honestly not what John was shooting for. The idea was this was going to be… This is a mythic structure. This is like, you know, Disney’s Stonehenge that, you know, and you have this iconic giant, you know, golf ball, you know, here at your entrance to the park. And it just, he wanted, it just seemed very sterile to him, the space, you know, and it’s so-

Len Testa: So wait, so it was sterile, but his idea of getting rid of sterility is adding monolithic slabs of rock. How about a plant? Does anybody have a fern?

Jim Hill: Well, the idea- The idea is to break up the structure. I mean, think about it. You know, how long ago was it when you entered the park here and they had the three pieces of acrylic sticking up out of the right, right.

Len Testa: Yeah, that wasn’t any better. But mean seriously, we’ve walked from the entrance to almost to the base of Spaceship Earth. Has anyone seen a plant?

Jim Hill: In the future, Jim, there will be no foliage. No, mean, if you look at the cobblestone, what they did here, again, the idea is to put natural, I mean, stone, natural stone and stone-like shapes to frame Spaceship Earth, to take some of the onus off of, again, the giant tinfoil ball, you know?

Len Testa: Is that what it is? Because I never got that. Yeah. I do see. So we’re at the base of the fountain that’s in front of Spaceship Earth. And to Jim’s point, if you look at the ring on the inside of the… of fountain. You guys can hear the fountain in the background. But the fountain ring is essentially made of raised cobblestones, like the kind of cobblestones you’d see in the street. It’s different colors and some of them are actually sticking up higher. So they’re actually not wet and because they’re not wet, they’re a different color, a lighter shade than the ones that are getting wet. So you’ve got sort of these deep mud browns, you’ve got some of these really light beige colors. It’s all, it all works out pretty well. But I gotta tell you, James, mean, looking back over this, mean, between here and the Monorail station, there are sort of trees on either side, but this place could do with some grass.

Jim Hill: No, no, absolutely. And here, here is the thing. this was supposed to exist for 25 years. In fact, you remember buying the LEVA legacy tiles. I have one. Okay. But you if you look at the language there, it’s not into perpetuity. They will be here. Your face will be on that slab for 25 years and then they can resell the space. But to be honest, Disney is looking for outs. They want to tear it out. They know it doesn’t work. but 25 years, I mean, they’ve got at least another 15. Oh, yes. Oh, no, they got more than that. You know, I mean, so was it 25? Is it 25 years from the date of the last sale? There you go. Oh, my God. So that was like well into let’s put this way, my daughter and I have one. that’s. So she made her first trip when she was five, so they’ve got at least another 17 years of that?

Len Testa: Really?

Jim Hill: Yeah, absolutely. Killing me, killing me. No, it’s killing them because it was like, again, this is the curse of a wonderful model and then when you make it full size, something doesn’t work.

Len Testa: Yeah, that’s the thing. We were talking about this earlier, but I mean, I get the idea of something like Stonehenge. as what you’re going for it it probably work on paper it doesn’t work in three d.

Jim Hill: You know, they found out the hardware, were literally three to six months into the first install of the little metal things, and they had a child brought into the first aid who had laid on the wall and had burned all the way up their back. Seriously. Yeah, I bet. Oh, yeah, it’s got to be incredibly… I mean, it’s metal in the Florida sun. What are you expecting? No, that’s exactly it. at all angles, it became a boondog. You know what they could do? They could rotate the the stones they could lie them flat right and it could be like japanese cooking but but the the imprints when they sear the meat it’s your face on the meat. So instead of Benny Hottie, you’re cooking on top of Ben Hanna.

Len Testa: That’s right, that’s right. Lovely wife, Sari. Lovely people, lovely. They’re from Brooklyn. They’re So we’re walking past Spaceship Earth, still one my favorite attractions of all time. Storytelling superb. What do think about the new scene that went in a couple years ago?

Jim Hill: First of all, it’s kind of interesting that they found the space to do that. But at the same time, the computer room, you have to acknowledge that. Where we are, In fact, this is kind of the monkey in the back of both Epcot, the future world section of Epcot, as well as Tomorrowland, because the future obviously keeps moving forward. you know, the story of communication, circa 1982, know, yeah, computers, lovely. And now, mean, think about it, know, or just, you know, what you’re carrying in your hand to record the show probably has more electronic power to it than the original, you know, Mr. Lincoln figure.

Len Testa: Alright. It probably does. So I’m walking around with a little handheld digital recorder. So that’s, you know, they’ll have to circle back. In fact, I know that there’s language built into the contracts here at Future World. In fact, that’s a lot of reason that many of the sponsors bailed out after a while. They were under, as part of their sponsorship agreement, every 10 years they had to freshen their pavilions. I mean, literally, you know, you had to agree to bring in new exhibits, new technologies. And you know, there was subsequent language, the effect of you had to do smaller retrofits on top of that.

Jim Hill: Right. So it wasn’t just a big bang every 10 years.

Len Testa: No, no. And this just for a lot of people became an issue. It’s like, I don’t know if I want to be involved in Epcot, where it’s a it’s a money pit.

Jim Hill: Yeah, or it’s well, it’s it’s an expense that you have you have no choice, right?

Len Testa: Yeah, so whether it works or not, but this was you know from day one when they started to go out and chase sponsors for Epcot or chase countries for Epcot They never got the response they anticipated and it was because of the was it because the concept or was it because of the the contract terms?

Jim Hill: Actually, it’s it’s something entirely different that without a charismatic Walt Disney out front to sell it.

Len Testa: Yeah, mean just the problem is that, you know, this is a part of the Disney history that people really don’t understand, but Walt built up an organization that he had amazing lieutenants. mean, people he could turn to and go do this, but they were lieutenants. They weren’t leaders. And then when Walt died, all of these people who were wonderful foot soldiers for him got promoted to leadership positions and they couldn’t go. Some of them couldn’t lead. Yeah. mean, and more to the point, they couldn’t go to a GM. I think what Marty Sklar tells this wonderful story about trying to sell the sponsorship of Space Mountain to RCA. Eventually they did, right? But here’s the thing, was Walt Disney who figured out they were going into the meeting and they were at RCA pitching the early early concept for it and so Walt was at one end of the table or Marty was one end of the table with the art and it’s a giant lengthy table and it’s eventually, Walt’s like The guy who makes decision is at the other end of the table. Bring the artwork down to the guy. Don’t do the 300 VPs between you and the guy who makes the decision. But a Walt knew how to do that. A Walt knew who was the decision maker in the room. Get me there. And the problem was with Epcot. It was meeting after meeting after meeting with sponsors that when they came in, they insisted on their narrative. mean, if you think about, for example, Country Bear Jamboree. The future of energy and add solar gonna do anything with solar. Leave me alone. It’s petrochemical.

Len Testa: That’s right, you know. So we’re just, we’re walking, we’re in the middle of an invention’s plaza right now. We’ve got our future world plaza. We’ve got, we’re by the tipboard. The interesting thing about the tipboard now, Jim, it’s gone from being, remember that sort of carnival lighting theme? It’s actually high res digital displays now. And apparently they’ve got a Twitter feed set up now. So if you follow the, if you follow a hashtag, and I think it’s 2011FW, something like that, Epcot. I’ll get you the hashtag. But if you follow that, it’ll actually tweet out what the current wait times are. The interesting thing though about the display gym, I don’t know if it’s just that we’re getting old, the words to describe each of the attractions are maybe an inch high. And you’re in the Florida sun, so you really have to stand literally next to the thing to actually read them. But I give them credit for trying. Med props for trying. Hey, you wanna walk into into InnoVentions, see what’s going on there?

Jim Hill: InnoVentions, by the way, in case anyone doesn’t know, is a blend of two words, Inventions and InnoVentions. And, you know, more to the point, this is… For lack of a better term, this… this whole area, it was born. Michael Eisner went to the Consumer Electronics Show.

Len Testa: Oh yeah, has a Total Consumer Electronics Show vibe to it.

Jim Hill: He came home, he went off to one of them, and they were at that point looking to what they were going to do with CommuniCorps. And it’s like, have you seen this? Let’s do this. Let’s do this. It’s fresh.

Len Testa: So we’re walking by Where’s the Fire, which is a game where you play, it’s a fire safety game, you look for things like exposed wiring inside a house. It’s a lot of fun. IBM Smarter Planet display coming up. We’ve got computers. Actually, this is a lot like, I would say that the display here is a lot like IBM itself. What the hell do they do? I mean, didn’t they used to build hardware? But now what does IBM do these days?

Jim Hill: I would imagine even the board of directors is asking that question. I think if ever there was a symbol of IBM now, this is it. I kind of sort of get it, but if I was pressed to say… these are the goals 123 you wouldn’t do it and just but the interesting thing you walk through this space and again it’s different deal than a different deal than a different deal. So there’s no visual harmony. There’s, if anything, exhibits, you know, fight visually to hold your attention.

Len Testa: It’s true. Now we’re walking past another great piggy bank adventure. I actually like this. This is pretty good, but they’ve, you notice they’ve put up a wall around this now. So before there used to be a small sort of almost like velvet rope type things that would keep you out. Now they’ve got a, looks like a six foot high wall around one end of it. But the piggy bank adventure actually is a lot of fun. It’s great. for kids under 12.

Jim Hill: the wall actually went up because, again, there is so much stuff in here that mom and dad would lose track of children that would wander off. so while you’re facing the screen trying to figure out with Johnny what’s going on, little Sally would wander off to the next exhibit. And eventually security made an issue of it and that’s what we are today.

Len Testa: That makes sense. So we’re now walking past a series of, looks like, video games for Disney Pixar films and there’s a bunch of those as well. You know, again.

Jim Hill: Or as I like to call this, this is the idea for Disney Quest. Really, wouldn’t they just… I mean, look at how many people are here. There’s one, two, three, five… There’s probably more people here than in House of Inventions right now. They could charge 20 bucks for this, you could stay all day, it’s air-conditioned. I don’t know, Jim. Sounds like a business on old me. Oh, there you go. That key phrase again, air-conditioned in Florida.

Len Testa: Yeah, it’s actually a nice day outside, too, but it’s not terribly crowded. What is this? Disney Rewards Photo Place. Ah, this is the character greeting for Disney guests. Disney Visa card holders. I get it. Alright, this is the… we’re passing back by the other side of… where’s the fire? Where they… people get to touch a real fire engine. And there’s a quick fire drill thing going on. I don’t know, do you come to Disney World to participate in fire drills?

Jim Hill: Well, you know, in a weird sort of way, I don’t necessarily have a problem with it. If a kid takes away from a vacation… how to survive a fire, that’s a good thing.

Len Testa: I’m good with it too. you know what think would be more realistic here? Is if they let one family member actually set the fire. I think that would be a better idea. Wanna walk through the other side of interventions? Let’s keep going. It’s air conditioned and we’re walking. We’re already moving in that direction anyway. Again, this is… This was what makes this place tough. is just keeping it fresh, just keeping it, you know. Right, so some of the ideas are very good. When done right, storm struck over in Innoventions East, which we’ll talk about. Very good attraction. I do like the piggy bank adventure, guys, if you’re listening and you haven’t been to piggy bank adventure, go ahead and try it. I think that’s good. there’s the IBM thing. Actually, I never understood, because they had a video game here too, right? Remember you used to walk up on an elevated stage over to the left? I never really got what the game was either. Maybe I’m just old. Nah, let’s play MyBM.

Jim Hill: But that’s the other issue. They would bring these guys in to Glendale, they’d show them the prototype in a warehouse, and it’s like, oh my god, this is gonna wonderful, and yes, of course, it’ll sound good. Not realizing that three equally loud, colorful things will be in front of it back to it, to either side.

Len Testa: Right, in isolation it all makes sense, but when put together. The sum is less than the, the whole is less than sum of its parts. Alright, so now we’re back out in the sun, we’re in Future World West. To our left is the Imagination Pavilion, straight ahead is the Land Pavilion. Let’s head to the right and go to the seas. How do you feel about the seas, Jim?

Jim Hill: I think… You’re pro water? Me like water. This is actually, as far as retrofits go, is probably one of the more charming ones in Epcot. The interesting thing is they did… For quite some time, they had the Little Mermaid themed redo. A Little Mermaid themed ride? It’ll never work, Well, it was more the effect of… Next thing you’re going tell me is they’ve only got money for five scenes in the ride and then I I I I I didn’t say that he did No, it was more to the effect of is Ariel an effective character to do education with and in the end what they decided was that you know Ariel has her fan base, but you know when you look at Nemo and more to the you know the character of Mr. Ray you already have you know a an educational character, but you know The interesting thing is even this version of the ride, the original version wasn’t what they planned.

Len Testa: Wait, the original version of the C’s ride with Nemo? Or the original, the Deluge?

Jim Hill: Yeah, mean literally this was going to be an epic ride through attraction. fact, at one point as you’re in your introductory scene, the wall was going to split open and a 20 foot tall figure of Poseidon was going to… But again, 20 foot tall AA figure who was literally going to swing his Trident and open the sea for you when there was going to be a bubble vehicle that you rode through and explained the tiny ecosystem. And only then after Trident had deemed you worthy that you understood about the sea, you then allowed in the sea base Alpha. cool. Yeah, mean, the Omni Movers, the little taste of what you do with the Omni Movers is literally, that’s a fourth. you know maybe a fifth of the amount of right track they were initially going to do. But no, this became the franchise that worked here. It kind of makes sense. this was, mean we’re talking, Ariel was going to go in here as late as 2003. But that was part of the Project Gemini project, where literally you were going to gut Spaceship Earth, you were to put the time racer attraction in there, you were going to put the rainforest out in of the land and you were going to have the coaster that zoomed through the tree tops of the rainforest. I this would have been green and lush and much more character friendly. And this, don’t get me wrong, the work they’ve done here is good. I again, think Merm Nemo, for all of it having piggybacked on the Nemo submarine voyage for Disneyland, is still an effective and fun attraction. They move people through, there’s rarely a wait. I mean, there’s a wait when it opened, but now, mean, it’s, you know, walk on five minutes most of the time. No, that’s it exactly. Are there any plans for a coral reef?

Jim Hill: Every restaurant at Walt Disney World now is in play. You know, I mean, it just, it’s kind of, it’s just the age we’re facing. In fact, remind me, I was talking with a friend about the change on the… the reservation thing they’re about to do where you you know how you can make multiple reservations with a credit card?

Len Testa: yeah they’re actually I think they’re cutting back on that now where you you you can’t well they’re about to put a ten dollar hold fee and if you don’t show really?

Jim Hill: yeah I mean literally last night I got called about that so that’s you know they’re gonna creep that out like Sometime between now and November if I’m understanding correctly so roughly between now and the time the podcast comes out We should start seeing version one of that come out That’s a 10 bucks. I’ll have one info. We want that our one. No one’s gonna make reservations anymore The problem is that you’ve got all these people who have figured out how to game the system. Yeah, I mean the effect of what they figured is that all the reservations have to be under a name. For example if I make a reservation to do James Hill and then I make another reservation at a different restaurant at Jim Hill and then another reservation under Jimmy Hill. You can hold three different reservations and walk into a park and decide where you want to go. And the computer system still accepts those. So now it’s like, and what they’re finding is they have a no show rate that can vary from 25 to 40%.

Len Testa: Oh yeah, yeah. So during off season, it’s huge. During peak season, it’s like 5%. We’re walking, by the way, for those of you listening and noticing the change in background noise, we’ve just walked the back entrance of the CIS Pavilion. So we’re in C Base Alpha right now and we’re walking through the gift shop. When this initially opened, when it was United Technologies… By way, that’s the only thing I know about United Technologies is that they once sponsored C Base Alpha.

Jim Hill: Well, it was definitely kind of a difficult shoehorn. They were the ones that were willing to come in. But did you have any idea before then what they did as an organization? mean, was like Amalgamated Industries Incorporated. They were… They did helicopters… Really? Yes. I mean, it was really not a great fit. But it got this place open. I mean, and that… know, that… They were really sweating.

Len Testa: They were sweating in terms of getting sponsors for this thing? Because this is huge!

Jim Hill: They struggled everywhere to get sponsors for this thing. I mean, for example, one… the windows of Black Pavilion. They thought, oh, we’re going to have no problem. We’re going to have insurance companies. We’re going to have pharmaceutical companies. You know, we’ll get this locked. And it took them years to get med length. Wow. So we’re up on the second floor now of CBCL. This place is incredibly noisy. It’s way noisier than I thought it would be. So we’re coming up on the manatee display. Manatees, of course. What was the thing about manatees? nature’s tofu or something like that? Is the manatee out?

Len Testa: don’t see the manatee but I could be blind. you were a Florida boater, their nature’s speed bumps.

Jim Hill: They are the sweetest creatures though. I had a cousin who worked at SeaWorld. In fact, he left SeaWorld to come do large animals for Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Please don’t make the joke that him being my cousin, he had lots of experience with large animals. But I remember one day, he takes me backstage and it’s like they have this… this pool that casted me maybe 30 feet across and ridiculously see green water that you can’t see him but there were three gray lumps and he like he hands me a head of lettuce and just put it under the water and it’s like okay and the lump drifts over to you and it’s like they have you know I’m now feeding amenity and they have the softest mouth they just this and in fact it was that you just pet them they’re they’re bristly but they’re really sweet gentle creatures that unfortunately in our age of jet skis and you know you know, just they can’t make it.

Len Testa: Yeah, it’s from a different time.

Jim Hill: Well, the weird thing is that if you talk with the people in animal collection at SeaWorld, there’s actually a hard number that everybody has agreed to that when they go out and do the count, you know, in Florida, and amenities have drifted below that number, it’s an agreed upon number that’s okay, they are now at a non-survival point, and we go out and collect. And, you know, they’re gonna try to save the species that way. really? So, yeah, I mean. So now we’re walking back in the, so on the second floor of the observatory, we’re walking now down into the tunnel where we’ve got glass windows on either side of us and we see lots and lots of fishes swimming by on the other side. So on the left hand side we’ve got dolphin, on the right hand side lots of little fish. And again, Jim, everywhere we go we see animals. Them’s good eating. I can’t believe how noisy it is here.

Jim Hill: Yeah, well. Again, because I have family that worked this. have a great story to share about the dolphins here were psychotic.

Len Testa: The dolphins were psychotic here?

Jim Hill: Well, the thing… We’re not talking about like Mercury and Mars back when he was on cocaine, right?

Len Testa: No, as in there are, if you’ll notice, are rays in the water here. Right, stingrays, right? Okay.

Jim Hill: And the dolphins got so bored here that they actually, invented a game. And just above the water here there are steel rails, support rails. And what the dolphins figured out what they could do is that they came up under a ray fast enough and they could flip it out of the water onto the steel. And it was like literally the people would be working here they’d see and a ray would come out and it’s being dangling. It’s like crap. And have to go out and fix it. It was like Jimmy go get the rays. Yeah, but it was was literally the dolphins were entertaining themselves because they were so bored. and it would be you know that became part of the okay you know we would actually had to put up a friends to keep okay the dolphins will stay in here and that’s nice because you know is in the dolphin side if you notice in the dolphin side there aren’t any other fish over there yeah no absolutely that’s because you know they can’t play nice they can’t play nicely with the other fish that’s what happens this is why we can’t have nice things but no this is so impressive so beautiful. So I love it when a message of ecology is shouted at you Jim because that that really makes the message more effective when people scream at you. What is that? Is that a tarpon? I think it’s huge! Yeah, no, alright, and you’ve got you know, this means they’ve got a back door on the other reasons to see natural light here right now is they got the back door open. That’s right. So Jim and I are looking out looking at the second floor we’re looking into them the deepest part of the main tank and there’s light filtering in on the back wall and the only reason we can see the back wall is apparently somewhere above us someone left a door open and the is streaming in it’s kind of I’ve never actually seen this before and I’ve been here a lot but again there you can see this steel ray so again if we were dolphins loose they’d be dangling around that’s right we can see the steel that’s amazing that’s fine right looks like we’re roped off and they’re the dolphins themselves they’re nice doing well. This is good. It’s nice here. You know what they here? Seats. Well, you know, they don’t, they want you to come in. They don’t want you to linger, you know. We’ve got a throughput thing we gotta hit. No, that’s it. Exactly. But it is. It’s well done. It’s charming. There is, they’ve just now begun to acknowledge that they have a, an issue with the acrylic here. Really?

Len Testa: Cause this thing’s like seven inches thick, isn’t it?

Jim Hill: It’s not so much… It’s the clarity. Oh, whoa, It’s not as clear as it could be?

Len Testa: Yeah, I mean, notice that it’s… It’s sort of a dulling, a yellowing… Yeah. I thought that was my eyes. I thought I was just getting old. So now you’re facing a situation where do you replace your acrylic? You know, um… How would they… They’d have to… They’d have to, uh… Would they drain the tank for that?

Jim Hill: It’s a… That’s the thing, this isn’t like your home aquarium where you just go buy another one and put the fish in that for a little bit.

Len Testa: No, absolutely. if we hang here for a minute, we’ll get the big show moment. Okay, so, so Jim and I have walked out now of the main building. We’re looking down over the first floor and a diver… diver is just now coming out of the tube where he was… They fill it with water and they transport him up into the end of the tank. He’s coming out… Now he’s coming out. it’s like a superhero coming out of the phone booth. You’re gonna Clark damp. And they’re filling the tank again with water slowly. Now if you were an evil scientist you’d be going, whoa, right now. That’s great. Again, there are great show moments. Again, this is Disney. They can tell stories. They can dazzle you. But Epcot, so often… It wasn’t Disney deciding what stories were being told. was the sponsors. so desperately needed to make the money, you know, the money to build this place. Right. So often they would end up defaulting to, what is, what is this sponsor? What is it you want to do? Well, what’s your idea?

Len Testa: That’s how I feel about this attraction. I love the idea. And I remember the original movie where they talked about you, the season, everything. It was a great introductory movie, but then you get to see base alpha and it’s, it’s so unstructured that It’s not cohesive. Like I get the idea that you can go from place to place and discover stuff, but where’s the overarching thematic element? Where’s the thing that says this is what CBS Alpha is?

Jim Hill: Well, the other thing actually for the redo for Nemo, in hindsight is always 2020, but they went with a blue color scheme, know, shades of blue. Remember when you were initially in here, this was somewhat white, somewhat austere, but the color actually helped. light in the room and you could see.

Len Testa: Yeah it’s pretty dark here right now by the way so now we’ve got the teals and blues and it’s it’s dark.

Jim Hill: And that’s what kind of bit them in the ass. Now couple that though with you’ve got you know the first of the living character in issue you know attractions in hero shows. You’ve you know Turtle Time with Crush and you know that since it opened has been you know a top five show for the part. It’s still You know, they exported the technology to other parks, So we go to Disneyland Paris and they’ve got a Stitch attraction that does… That’s the only Stitch attraction that works anywhere in the world.

Len Testa: Well, but you know… And I don’t think it’s Stitch, by the way. I think it’s the fact that the show works, not that Stitch works.

Jim Hill: Also, you know, the nice thing is that Stitch is an alien and with the park having… It’s a multicultural park. Oh, you don’t have to understand. Yeah, no. struggles with language, you struggle with language and that actually makes it workable.

Len Testa: that totally makes sense. No, they’ve actually talked about bringing that show stateside here but you the reality is that you know.

Jim Hill: We’ll speak English.

Len Testa: Yeah. So it’s like where’s our struggling moment? that’s funny. That’s good. Alright well anything on the horizon for The Seas coming up?

Jim Hill: That depends on who you talk to.

Len Testa: Is there a sponsor now for this pavilion? I don’t think there is.

Jim Hill: No. And, you know, that’s where the conversations get kind of interesting because if all goes according to plan, there may be another Nemo film. Finding Nemo 2? Well, no. Revenge of Mr. Well, the interesting thing is actually Ellen DeGeneres, who’s really… been leaning on them very hard about, you know, I want there to be a new Nemo film. You know, I liked making this and Disney’s like, well, you know, here’s a woman who has, you know, this talk show that’s very popular, who loves working with us. like, can’t we accommodate her in some way? Can we do a Christmas special or something? No, seriously. Absolutely. Seriously. And it just, so the notion is that if we’re going to do that, is there anything we can piggyback on? is can we do, if not a ride film, can we do a 3D experience, can we do something? You know, just let’s take advantage of this window. But the problem is that, again, Pixar being as secretive as it is, nobody is willing to talk about it yet, you know, we’re in very, very, very loose-leafed area right there. But the idea is to take advantage of that and just repurpose things and bring it here.

Len Testa: Yeah, it would kind of make sense. I mean, I think… Isn’t it true that everywhere within the film division now somebody on the film is saying how are going turn this into a theme park ride?

Jim Hill: Oh, no, absolutely. They refer to them as the speed teams now. That if you’re a tent pole film or an animated feature, there are literally meetings every week where it’s consumer product sits down, PR sits down, theme park sits down. Where are we in regard to we’re 18 months out, we’re a year out, we’re six months out. What are we doing to get the word out? How are we going to capitalize on this? How are we going to extend the brand? that’s where we are now in regard to Living Seas. It’s just sort of the notion of this is where we’re having that conversation about can we do something more with Nemo or can we do something more with Ariel. In fact, getting back to the… the Coral Cafe that there’s at least, you know, the 20 or $30,000 that’s been sent on the notion of Ariel’s Grotto, a re-themeing of that, you know, as a restaurant. So like the same name that they have out in DCA, but here, and actually a grotto under the sea. That’s it exactly. But at the same time, why, you know, it then becomes the constant argument of why spend the money. When you’re selling out every you’re sitting already, you know, it’s interesting. All right. So we’re getting ready to walk into the land but I actually like the land pavilion quite a bit I like a couple things about it. Number one. I like the artwork on the way in the sort of the strata. Oh, also it’s you notice it’s one of the few attractions that have a lot of trees around it.

Jim Hill: Mm-hmm

Len Testa: So the one thing I don’t like though, this is a little cardio test that you walking uphill You know in the morning and if you do this, you do it once to get your fast pass You do it again maybe to eat lunch. You do it again to ride Soren. At end of the day, you’re on your little stair master thing going on here.

Jim Hill: Well, know, it’s… But again, you have to get up here so there could be a basement. Again, That’s right. They’re making you walk up the stairs just on the outside and it’s a ramp. You know, this isn’t the kingdom. We don’t have utilidors here. Well, no. We have one corridor that runs under, you know, the… Comedicore in inventions area, but that’s it, you know. But here, I mean, you have to get up to this level so you can do your boat ride on the ground floor.

Len Testa: On the ground floor, that’s right. Because this isn’t Las Vegas and you’re not gonna put the boat ride on the second floor. So I do like this entrance way too because you get to, well now they’re stacking wheelchairs in front of it, but wow, that’s a lot of ECVs. That’s what I mean, this is what I’m about. So we just walked into the Soren Pavilion and literally the entire front rail from, over by Circle of Life. all the way over to the ramp to Soren is filled with ECVs. It’s like a convention of ECVs. 15 in a row, taking up literally the entire, you cannot walk all the way to the rail because ECVs are there. this is one of my favorite entrances. Number one, sight, right? So you walk in, you’ve got the tall ceiling, you’ve got the balloons floating in the middle when it’s a little bit more sunny. Well, I guess they’ve got it dimmed. But sometimes there’s the streaming through, but also you’ve got smell from sunshine seasons below. Cheese bread. Cheese bread. Essentially, the sensory season is fabulous, by way. And then you’ve got different attractions, they’re well distributed too. So you’ve got Soarin’, to your left. You’ve got Garden Girl straight in front of us, so they’re actually not serving lunch, but if they were, they’d be there. You’ve got the land, like around the two o’clock position. And then you’ve got Circle of Life. Some things are working out pretty well. Let’s take a walk back down to Circle of Life. We’ll walk around the pavilion. Anything new going on with Circle of Life? Is conservation still in, Jim?

Jim Hill: The interesting thing is that they were quite seriously talking about changing this film out and then suddenly the Lion King is the top, you know, the… Lion King 3D right now is the top film. Two weekends in a row. it’s just suddenly, it’s like, wait a minute, why would we change this? Why would we take this out?

Len Testa: So you notice though, Jim, they’ve actually added signage. So when you come in now, they’ve added signage that points out the Circle of Life film. This wasn’t here a few months ago. So when you walk in now, if you go to the right and you walk towards Circle of Life, there’s actually signage that explains what Circle of Life is. And it’s got Timon and Pumbaa, which is interesting because if you’re looking at the marquee for Circle of Life, all you see is really you see a globe and you kind of see Simba, Timon and Pumbaa, but they’re dark. their dark silhouettes against a bright globe. It kind of doesn’t really explain what and also the the title Circle of Life an environmental fable is not selling it to kids.

Jim Hill: No, no it isn’t but it did but again to their credit you know and Disney is about recognizing that you know from a signage point of view. But yeah, the other thing that’s interesting about this film is that it was it was actually done by the old Florida animation studio all of the animation was in fact a number of animators who actually worked on Lion King who did the… In fact, Florida basically did the I just can’t wait to be king number from the… Just can’t wait!

Len Testa: king! Oh, I was in the gym. was not picturing all that. Sorry.

Jim Hill: It’s alright. But yeah, they worked on it. it’s, you know, it’s a historical artifact of what this, you know… A more innocent time. When the studio actually used to be a studio. Hey! I remember that, vaguely.

Len Testa: So now we’re walking downstairs, we’re gonna walk past Living with the Land and past some ride named Soren. Living with the Land, I still love it. I still love the attraction. It got me interested in hydroponics, not for growing weed, I might add. I’m the one. But the sad part of that attraction is the narration has gone away. Yeah, so it used to be human narration, which, I mean, it hit or miss on the human narration. But now it’s just automatic and it’s lost some of its charm. The interesting thing that’s the exact same thing they’ve done on the buses. In fact, Disney…

Jim Hill: That’s right, no more bus driver narration.

Len Testa: And supposedly it was actually to shut down the infamous bus driver rumor. That the bus driver would entertain you by, well you know they’re gonna do the Smurf ride. A fifth gate is coming up soon. It is. But hey, I didn’t say that. Anyway, over here, so we’re walking up towards Soarin’ right now. So we’ve got bathrooms to our left, we’ve got Soarin’ straight ahead of us. 55 minute wait, I’m guessing it’s not really 55 minutes. We’ve got a 7.45 return time for FastPass. We’ve got people exiting from the boat ride. Hey Jim, have you ever been on the tour?

Jim Hill: behind the scenes back in the day though I mean it’s been a number of years since they’ve done it plants still grow the same way it’s totally cool well you know except for the horrible horrible man eating ones but actually what intrigues me about this attraction is that that literally when they put soaring in there’s good huge chunks of food rocks literally just feet off to the left of this I mean you you are cutting through parts of the theater. So essentially it’s to the left of the stamp entrance, But they’re right there. mean, literally behind the wall. fact, cast members, you if go… So if Tone Locke ever makes a comeback or… There you go. Get a food wrapper. yeah, it’s still not all there, but there’s enough there that… But, you know, again, theme park fans, you know, you know, are affectionate toward these things. The people who build the attractions are not. It’s like wall up. If they can’t see it, I don’t need to spend money on it. I don’t need to change that. And so it’s there. Speaking of things that are still there, let’s head over to the Imagination Pavilion. I hear there’s still some stuff on the second floor. So anything about Sunshine Season, have you eaten here recently?

Jim Hill: Yeah, in fact, I was backstage, this was 10 years ago now, and I was visiting a friend in Imaginary again. You know just walked up by the loading dock and literally sitting there on the loading dock, you know, just out in the Florida sun is the little house and the rooster. You know, remember, in here it was like every 15 minutes to mark the time the rooster would come out and… Oh yeah, right, right. It’s literally, it’s the whole house, it’s the assembly just sitting out in the sun. Back up the truck.

Len Testa: Well, that was the problem. I had a Geo Metro. spoiled again. Because I know they look in the windows and it’s like… Excuse me sir, I don’t remember you coming in here with your rooster friend. We just met. Yeah, that’s right. He asked me for a ride. He’s asking me to help move his house. that’s it. That’s fantastic. Alright, so we’re walking out of the land pavilion. A lot of people coming in here. I’m surprised the garden girl doesn’t do lunch. I don’t know.

Jim Hill: That is a surprise, but you know, the other thing they come up again, if you think about it, right now during food and wine, you don’t want people sitting down.

Len Testa: No, you want people moving around, going booth to booth, spending $3.25 per snack. absolutely, absolutely.

Jim Hill: But the other thing, frankly, that this is something that a lot of the restaurants at Disney World and a lot of the longer attractions are dealing with, as the ticket price creeps up, you you know this from the touring plans, that people aren’t really happy unless they get in at, what is it, nine point? Nine or ten attractions per… That’s it, exactly. And so actually the more that they if they did more they’d be even happier. But you know, so the reality is to sit down for a leisurely sit down meal. Yeah. So Epcot’s only open, Epcot’s open 12 hours a day on average. But not all of it. But not all of it. And the thing is too, if you’re going to you’re going to spend 90 minutes of it on on meals, you’re essentially taking what 15 % of your 15 % of your day to one meal. So that’s that’s why Quick service is flourished and unless it’s appointment dining or character dining. I mean, again, that’s one of the notions of changing Coraline, Coral Cafe, Coral Reef, an aerial dining experience. But even then, it’s just sort of like, I’m already doing well with that. Why would I change that? Let’s walk over to the Imagination Pavilion. This is an interesting walk from the land.

Len Testa: So we’re leaving a scented, so they’re piping out smells from Sunshine Seasons. It’s canopied, it’s dark, it’s shaded, it’s cool. And just as you leave the border of the Lant Pavilion, bam, you’re out in the Florida sun, and it’s 100 yards of concrete. It’s like the DMZ between attractions. All we need here are like Korean snipers up on the tower, and it would be more difficult. Just imagine it’s cooler than that. Get a home for that. Yeah, that’s it. Just imagine. Use your imagination to think you’re in Iceland or something like that.

Jim Hill: But this is, you know, lots of people have talked for years and years about the change out. of imagination and again this this honestly wasn’t disney’s fault again getting back to the the language it’s in the contracts that right at the time when this pavilion had to be changed in and kodak actually insisted but all the problem was the kodak was spinning it was the rise of the digital camera there film business was falling to the floor they didn’t have the big money for the redo didn’t have forty million dollars to spare you know and in fact home so you know it was and yet at that point it was something Pinder and Figment were quaint and I will tell you because I literally had a good friend who worked on the redo and he called me one afternoon and he said well they just sent me the list of celebrities for the attraction. It’s Gavin McLeod. Michael Jordan. Really? Well, was literally who Disney had relationships with, who the theme park rides were available to. And at one point they literally did a… The idea was you were being inserted into Michael Jordan’s imagination. And at one point, in fact, he sent me the art of, you know, with this giant sort of, you know, basketball-like copper structure. but had like a funnel going off and the idea that you were going to be put into this thing and then pressurized and shot into Michael Jordan’s imagination and learned about how to be an excellent athlete and Everybody was like this is the worst idea we’ve ever heard and how do we kill this? Who thought of this and how do we find them?

Len Testa: So we’re walking through the back of Imageworks Is there anything going on? Is there anything going on with the with the attraction by the way?

Jim Hill: You know, it’s weird on the back of this being a year where there have been a couple of very high profile appearances by, you know, the Dreamfinder character, coupled with how well the merchandise sells. There are always conversations now about, well, could we bring him back? But it’s like, it’s an exact… There have been, you know, they’ve discussed different iterations of it. You know, one version was, it’s like the Dreamfinder’s son has to learn the family business. And, you know, or we get a celebrity to be the Dreamfinder. you know, I’ve seen, again, the same thing. It’s the list where they had Steve Martin as the Dreamfinder. They had Jack Black as the Dreamfinder. know, Jack Black as Dreamfinder might actually work. That was the idea that you go with a young enthusiastic. He could do sequels. And it’s a strange time because it’s just like everyone acknowledges there’s affection for the character but the other thing is that and nobody ever talks about this but Dreamfinder and Figmen It’s they aren’t just Disney’s they are co-owned by Kodak.

Len Testa: they really? I didn’t know that. so there’s intellectual property shared.

Jim Hill: That’s it. Exactly. You know that this was a character that was invented for that pavilion and so now you’re in this situation where If you’re do something with him, you have to get the character, you know, have to get Kodak on board.

Len Testa: I’m gonna see what this one does. So Jim and I are now playing with the Figments Melody Maker thing where you wave your hands and you get to different things. We’re doing apparently whatever, no matter how I wave my arms, I’m doing tuba. Hope you guys can listen to this. I’ll give you a couple seconds of background music. staring at me with his dead eye. I’ve got, it looks like Ariel in DCA. I’ve got nothing but tuba here. What’s going on? All right. So apparently most of the orchestra is on honors. So we’re walking through the rest of the imagination pavilion. You’ve also got an area where, this was my favorite part of the first version. So it’s lighted squares that you jump on and different sounds come out. This is just an advanced version of what was upstairs in Imageworks. Absolutely. It’s nice to see them revisit the concept. But, and, and…

Jim Hill: Doesn’t everyone want their living room to work like this?

Len Testa: I’m not coming to your house. No, I… Again, this is what was affordable. know, in fact, they recognized from the first horrible redo that they had to do something. They found more money. You know, and they literally lifted up pieces of the track to try to put them back into the attraction. The interesting thing about this, about Imageworks from my perspective is the, you know, the Fignance melody thing is great. The sound squares that you jump on and make noise, that’s great. Really everything else is webcams to send pictures back home and they’ve got one, two, three, four, five, seven, nine of them. It’s the bulk of the space is really webcams. And I know that was great technology. back 15 years ago, who, dude, my iPhone does this now. Better I might add. What else is eating up 90 % of the space? Oh, retail is eating up rest of the space. I mean, just, was, they had to persuade when they were doing the redo that they were going make money. And this is between print on demand and, you know, in fact, that’s the other part of the story that in regard to shutting down the original… version of the attraction. They didn’t tell the retail people. They just asked, well, we’re going do this, we’re going to take Figmen out. And it’s like, are you high? You’re going to do what? We make $500,000 a year off of plush for Figmen. Where’s my half million dollars?

Jim Hill: Yeah, where else is that going to come from? And it’s like, well, no, we have to do this. Kodak wants us to.

Len Testa: So yeah, between the awful, let’s put celebrities in it, to, know, Doug and I, there was one version where they were actually, Disney had the rights to Wallace and Gromit in the theme park. And we’re gonna I love Wallace and Gromit. And they wanted that, you know. Im motioning to Laurel to go up the stairs at Imageworks. She won’t do it. We’re gonna walk away Laurel, you do what you think is best. Alright, you wanna walk over to see Future World East?

Jim Hill: so sorry, EO, how long is this thing gonna be here? By the way, Michael Jackson’s still dead. another part of the story i think we talked about this earlier with the the amount of money george lucas is a very interesting deal with the waltham’s net company The deal is not only with the money he makes off of helping to develop the attractions and that sort of thing, but for every year an attraction is open in an individual Disney park, every single attraction that has his name on it from the mind of George Lucas or whatever it is, he gets a million dollars a year. Wow. Okay. So when they decided to bring Captain EO back, there was no person on the planet more thrilled than George Lucas. Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. Four hundred or four billion dollars for doing nothing. For something he did 20 years That’s it exactly. Just hey You know that I I love this idea says Lucas. So do you need a quote from me? Or my accountant?

Len Testa: So we’re walking back towards Inventions East. We’re going past the upside down waterfall in front of Imagination. It’s to our right. To our left is the back of Inventions West. this is the of the, it used to be the Epcot history thing was here. They’ve got restrooms and stuff over there and we’ll walk over that way. It’s nicely shaded over here too I might add.

Jim Hill: Absolutely. But again, for a temporary display space, know, and again, you keep these things in your inventory just in case you need them. just circle back for just a second. I got this from the head of communications and imaginary. Jackson, Captain EO will stay open as long as there’s a crowd. And then when…

Len Testa: Define crowd though, did they say?

Jim Hill: Well, you know… mean, still pulling in a few people. It’s probably doing better than imagination was. I hate to say this, but with the Conrad Murray trial going on right now, it’s like, hey, yeah, let’s go see that. Michael Jackson is still in the news one way or the other. Yeah. Cirque du Soleil is starting its tour. It’s Michael Jackson themed show next year. I would anticipate…

Len Testa: Is that a tour they’re going to Vegas with that?

Jim Hill: Well, just this morning I saw the ad for the stop here in Orlando. So it’s a concert tour. Wow, really? anyway, if you don’t like Captain EO, I don’t have good news for you, it’s here for a while.

Len Testa: That’s fine, because originally they said, originally said it’s a limited engagement. They actually promoted it. Limited engagement. You know, we don’t know how long this is going to last, but now we’re on year two, right?

Jim Hill: Yep. And I would anticipate at least another two. At least another two. At least another two.

Len Testa: And they’re going to replace, they’re going to bring back Honey and Shrink the Audience then? Because at that point it’ll be 30 years old, right?

Jim Hill: No. In fact, at that point it’ll be 20 years old. They got so many guest complaints about the snake. Oh, the effects in scaring children. And that was the thing, you bring your kid in, you sit them down, and yes, you’re walking in and they’re saying, by the way, this show has intense effects, intense effects, and who listens?

Len Testa: No, no one listens. um, oh! we’re walking past the middle part of Future World right now and there’s this really neat display that’s called Discover the Cranberry. It’s a cranberry bog in the middle of Future World. So right before the entrance to World Check, you can kind of see the US Pavilion off to side, but they’ve got this sort of triangular-shaped wooden planter. about two feet high. Around the edges are ferns, know, bushes, cranberry bushes. And in the middle is this cranberry bog, it’s about two feet of water, and they’ve got somebody from Ocean Spray standing in the middle of it, and the thing is filled with cranberries, it’s hysterical. Well, again, a floating planter, if you will. It’s a floating planter, that’s right, it’s water filled. So how long do the… they replace the cranberries? Those are real, right? Real cranberries.

Jim Hill: They came from the corporate headquarters in Lakeville, Massachusetts. What’s funny is that when they initially proposed this idea last year that did it for food and wine, and Disney wanted to test how long the cranberries were going to work. again, normally when… it’s fruit, it’ll perish, right? It’ll eventually go bad. Ocean’s Prairie does this all the time. They’ve built bogs at like Rockville Center, they built them on Hollywood Boulevard. They’re there for three days and then they’re gone. So they’re three days. Yeah, okay, so they’re talking about doing for six weeks So it’s like let’s do a very scientific Study so what they did is they filled a kiddie pool with water put it out back at Epcot filled it with cranberries and Every so days a few days would check to see how well the cranberries did they lasted like two or three weeks So now that just the plan is that okay, you know when they start to go off They will just take them all out and a couple weeks. We’ll get a skimmer. That’s That’s right. So But actually it gets better there as part of food of food and wine I forget the name of the chef but they’re going to do a cooking demo in the bog.

Len Testa: No! Seriously. they’re not using electric blenders I’m presuming here with that. That was my question but you know they promised me photos. With the Cuisinart? they hold the Cuisinart?

Jim Hill: Never mind that just standing in the crater. Never mind ocean spray the guys from OSHA will be there going no you don’t no you’re not. Watch out for that I mean just that kills me. That’s gotta be classic.

Len Testa: So we’re walking back towards the fountain right now. There’s not a show going on but you guys can hear definitely hear music going on in the Passing the stage that was built for what was the name of that stage show the Mickey’s Colorscape or something to that effect. mean the gimmick was… Mickey’s Colorscape didn’t involve LSD?

Jim Hill: Well, Georgia, actually what was funny is that they actually took… It was a show that had been done in front of the castle. It’s the Cinderella Castle of Tokyo Disneyland. You have to understand that you’re bringing an incomprehensible Japanese theme park show and dropping in the middle of Epcot. What could possibly go wrong with that? So it’s all of the characters on stage and it’s aliens arrive… And I say this this is the older edition of Epcot before they really did you know they really upped the colors right so it’s like the theme is that the aliens are arriving to steal all of the colors From Epcot yes, so they arrive it’s like wait a minute beige never mind obviously someone else has been here They’ve stolen the beige and replaced it with taupe Sandstone you know show kind of derailed in the first couple of minutes. That’s classic.

Len Testa: Alright, so we’re making our way to Future World East. We’re gonna walk through Inventions real quick. Sure. Alright. Elliot, do you like Electric Umbrella by the way? It’s one of the few places you can get free drink refills.

Jim Hill: Yeah, and here, know, particularly in this park, that’s a lifesaver.

Len Testa: Oh yeah, because we just walked through, what, three miles of concrete? And looming in the distance. Looming in the distance is mission space. That’s another one of those great what-if attractions. mean, don’t get me wrong, what’s there is good if you remember to keep your head pointed straight forward. You know, the… Yeah, I haven’t seen that many warning messages since Stialis first came out.

Jim Hill: Oh, no, no, absolutely, absolutely. But the original version of it was that you were actually supposed to get out not on, you know, I mean… not a simulator, not a test to go to Mars, you were actually supposed to fly to a space station and step out into this huge space that they were gonna convince you was in space, actual deep space, with this really relatively easy to pull off illusion. mean, mind you, it was a lot of computer power to do it. But you had windows on the floor, windows on the wall, windows on the ceiling, and you a starscape. that naturally rotated through all of the windows. nice. And just the whole notion of, I am some place because I can look out the window and see where I am.

Len Testa: Nice. So we’re in Invention East right now. We’re walking through the Underwriters Laboratory Lab where you get to play with different things and test them and break them. It’s a lot of fun. The thing I like about this the most is it’s hands on, right? So you can try and bust up a television and see what it’s like to open and close the door a million times. And just for effect, you guys have been here before, you know that there are pads where you can jump on a pad on the floor and when you do that, a door opens and closes. And as of now, each door, so the leftmost door, has been opened 974,500 times. into 88 times 89. So that’s great. Here’s one of my favorite rides though in all of interventions right here. It’s some of all thrills. Classic ride. I don’t know how much these things cost Jim, but if you ever need to stage a party, you put one these in your house.

Jim Hill: This is another one of those great what might have been this is the kooka arm. This is the kooka arm that’s the basis for the Harry Potter attraction over at Universal, right? And was supposed to be the basis of the Incredibles ride for Tomorrowland at both Disneyland and Disney World it totally would have made sense as an Incredibles ride. In fact, what was great about this proposed ride was that you could literally fine tune it. mean, you got on the thing and there were five buttons in front of you. And did you want the Jack Jack level, the Reload of Lee Gentle, all the way up to Mr. Incredible, where basically it shook you into the fillings came out of your head. Nice. It’s a great ride, though. It’s very customizable. And kids love it. Kids love the fact that you can actually, it’s interactive, right? can play with the track layouts and do whatever you want with it. it’s rewritable because the maximum score is just under 1,300 points. But they give you a score at the end. And depending on what your score is, if you’re at 500, they’ll tell you, next time do this and this and this, and it’ll be much more intense. And I think for teenagers, that’s like a… That’s

Len Testa: Could be, for interventions it’s not a bad attraction, it’s not bad at all. It’s a similar, you go through a natural storm and the cool thing is they walk you through all the things that a tornado can do and then they give you a series of choices on how you design your own suburban house. Things like whether you have a pitched roof or a flat roof and whether the sides of your house curve in a little bit or whether they’re straight. each of those decisions, whether you have shingles or tiles.

Jim Hill: Or you make it out of balsa wood?

Len Testa: I think it’s actually straw… No, wait, wrong story there, sorry. yeah, then they simulate a storm and then you go. But it’s pretty neat. It’s actually not bad, it’s in 3D too. Actually it’s 4D because they throw water on you when you’re going through the storm.

Jim Hill: You see, now that’s classic Disney education. it’s entertaining. Yeah, it’s entertaining and you’re learning something.

Len Testa: Let’s say I’ve learned now that the second floor of my house needs to be pitched in a little bit so that it’s not acting as a sail for the wind when tornadoes come. Absolutely. Absolutely. I it’s very good. Let’s walk back through Inventions because it’s air-conditioned and we’ll pick up with with Universe of Energy. So we’re walking out here and it looks like on our right they’re doing a new attraction called Habit heroes presented by Blue Cross Blue Shield Anthem and Blue Anthem and Blue Shield of Florida so I’m guessing that if it’s called the habit heroes and it’s sponsored by an insurance company I know what this is I know this is gonna be you’re gonna get halfway through the ride and they’re gonna decide that you don’t have coverage anymore they’re gonna kick you off sad but true but realistically know, Disney is on a health food kick. Disney is on, you know, the cliché of the theme park fan who is heavy set and eats only junk food is starting to worry Disney.

Jim Hill: Because it’s not how they want to represent themselves. Well, plus the parks are huge too, right?

Len Testa: I mean, it’s hard to get around if you’re… Yeah. Again, the 15 vehicles we just saw. That was actually amazing. I’ve never seen that before. That many ECVs stacked up. So we’re walking up to a universe of energy right now. We’re walking at the site of Inventions and we’re walking up onto the mirrored side of energy so all we see are the mirrored tiles and we’ve got the reflecting pool out back you know I think if they focus this the right way you could actually burn down in inventions isn’t that like an Archimedes mirror or something like that?

Jim Hill: Don’t tell people that. I’ve never actually seen it so what Monorail going overhead Monorail Burgundy again is that the exit to energy right there?

Len Testa: dumps you right over Ah dumps you right here. Okay good so let’s walk past energy anything going on with energy by the Well again remember we were talking about Ellen DeGeneres pushing very heavily to do the follow-up Nemo project. She was great in this, the way. She’s really lent this thing new life. The interesting thing, too, is because she sort of got her second wind with her talk show, and Bill Nye is still in the news, and he’s still active, this thing is what, 15 years old now? Yep. It’s still going strong. they’re looking to refresh. But the problem is that Ellen really no longer looks like Ellen did then.

Jim Hill: No, she looks slightly different. She’s getting older, but she still… no, no, no, no. It’s just the notion of… And more to the point, our attitudes toward technologies have changed subtly. So a giant oil refining company isn’t the best sponsor for you?

Len Testa: We need a variety of opinions on this, or variety of voices. what just happened in the Gulf.

Jim Hill: So as part of the bigger conversation with her is like, if we do this, would you be then be willing to help us with a redo of energy? The conversation is progressing. I won’t say that definitively, you know, it’s going to happen, but the conversation is progressing. So, Ellen wants to do a redo of Nemo, and this is sort of like, if you do that, you know, if we do that, can you do this for us? There you go. That makes sense. But anyway, here we come on mission space, and just kind of interesting to have to watch them take one of the simulators. fact, isn’t it interesting that the green one, is it the green one that actually spins?

Len Testa: The green one does not spin. orange one does so actually they should have inverted it green should have been for vomit as far as I was concerned but for the for the spinning end. yeah but what I’ve heard is I’ve heard that the green side will always have a lower weight than the orange side so even literally if there’s no one in the park there’s literally no one in either line the orange side wait time will always be higher than the green side just so if you have any doubt about which attraction which side you’re gonna go on you go on the group you prefer the green side just to avoid liability. Wow, okay. Makes sense.

Jim Hill: you know, again, sadly, this was a ride technology. They were hoping to walk around the world. And after all of the problems and, you know, the couple of, you know, between the health issues and the one or two people who, you know, seriously, know, there’s at least one or two people who walked out of this thing and keeled over. But the reality is… But there people who walk off of Snow White and kill over. it just happens. I mean, again, there’s 20 million people a year. Some people, statistically, will just It’s a city. It’s a full-size city. you know, just randomly, this will happen. But again, because the death was linked to… Yeah, they just come off the ride. Yeah. So it just, it became a ding. And now, this is not going to travel. And now, on the other hand, we’re walking up on test track and…

Len Testa: So you mentioned, sorry, you mentioned the deaths. Remember when there was the monorail accident a couple years ago? One of the things that we did for the guide was we figured out the deaths per passenger mile of the monorail versus of walking from the contemporary to the Magic Kingdom to try and figure out which mode of transportation was safer. So turns out that the fatality rate for pedestrians is significantly higher, like between 10 and 100 times higher than the fatality rate on monorails. No matter I don’t know how the monorail thing turned out but no matter what monorails are safer than walking.

Jim Hill: well also, you know to be honest if those who have lived in Orlando number of years now will tell you that you know there was a rather famous monorail fire back oh that’s right yeah they were they had to have back oh and they were on the berm rather sorry they were on the they were on the the track right in the middle. but it gets better they one of the theaters here in town turned it literally they did a musical called the great monorail fire and it felt like a community theater thing It it was in Rift on Disney. There were so many people who work for theme parks and who work with Disney here that it just did great business for the better part of two or three years.

Len Testa: The things you guys can hear in the background are the different cars for test track. It sounds like they’re really putting them through here. I they’re running through like every 10 or 15 seconds it seems like. It’s definitely got great capacity. More to the point.

Jim Hill: of you in California you’re going to get to ride a slightly dumbed down version of this in Carsland next time. Same technology right?

Len Testa: Actually I heard different car technology but same idea.

Jim Hill: the only difference with this one is there’s actually going to be a moment in the thing with two cars on the track where you’re going to race and pass one another. side by side right so that’s the thing right.

Len Testa: and is that going to be random so that one side wins sometimes? Or does random does random cost money?

Jim Hill: Well more to the effect of it’s getting random past legal Got it. You know in vehicles full of people so so we’re walking in the back of test track right now we’re gonna go into the Discovery Center where they’ve got all of the GM cars and The last time I was here Jim the thing that the thing that I noted was Jim had just started stocking Chevy volt sorry volts and they actually had one here. They’ve got a volt here, but you can’t touch it. Like here’s our new car. It’s going to save the company. You can’t get anywhere near it. Is that the one up there on stage?

Len Testa: I don’t know. Let’s go say. Okay. So we’re passing by a series of nondescript General Motors cars. There’s a Cadillac. Is that the volt? Seriously, we need… Remember the days when you could tell GM cars from everybody else? Fins. That’s what GM needs, Fins. Alright, we got a Cadillac, we’ve got… Oh, this is the Volt! This is the 2011 Volt, the all-electric. 93 miles per gallon, 37 highway. Gas only, 37. Let’s see if we can get in. Is it open?

Jim Hill: Oh, you can get in the Volt these days! Thank you, GM, for listening to me. You know, it looks like a regular car. It’s, uh, so we’re not se… So this is the second vehicle we’ve been in today besides the boat. It looks like a regular car. Actually, it’s pretty spacious. I’m kind of excited, actually, about the Volt. Yeah, I’m hoping you can catch this too. It’s not bad for a little car. Good. I’m glad to see it’s open. I hope they sell a million of them. Good for them. It’s lightweight. It’s small. It’s sleek. Is that a Sunroof? Durable 2 to 4. 2 to 4. No, it’s fine. fine. And the rest of it is just big GM cars. But the Volt is, I think, the star here. Although I’m a little scared that no one else is beside this other than you or I. You and me. It’s not a bad looking car. Alright. And that concludes our tour of… Actually, everyone’s over at the red convertible Camaro. Now I understand. Yeah, got it, got it, got it. That’s cool. All right, should we walk over to World Check-In? It’s only 1.24 miles, All right, fabulous. Let’s walk over. Maybe we’ll grab… It is food and wine, so maybe we’ll grab some food and or wine. A beverage, a beverage, we need a beverage. Where will we find a beverage? Food and wine, Alright, let’s go. Yeah, the exit’s that way. I love the gift shop. They cut a break with cars?

Jim Hill: Well, mean, think about it. You you’ve got this kind of scene of new merchandise. right, right. Cars and merchandise. Got it. A test truck. a franchise that they just they want to keep going. They just did Cars 2, is there gonna be a Cars 3?

Len Testa: No, actually the interesting thing is they have decided that from here on in it’s planes. In fact, John Pryor has just agreed to do the voice of a little Piper Cub character that you know basically is It’s just picture cars only done with 747s and in fact the the Learjet that Flynn Mcmissle traveled in around the world is kind of the introductory characters in this world.

Jim Hill: neat. So we’re gonna take a short break while we walk on the concrete walkway. Again, more concrete, Jim. concrete walkway over past the Odyssey to Mexico when we will pick it up in Mexico. See you guys then.

Len Testa: Jim, we’re here in World Showcase. We just walked past the Odyssey restaurant. We’ve got our nice cold Coca-Cola here. Interesting thing for me in terms of architecture for the Odyssey restaurant is there’s this pier that extends out from the Odyssey almost halfway, or about a third of the way, towards the bridge between Future World and World Showcase. And this pier is completely exposed. They’ve got a couple of seats with umbrellas at the end of it, but… There is literally nothing shielding you from the direct Florida sun on this pier. So it’s this concrete slab elevated above humid water. And there’s literally not a soul on this thing. It’s a modern day. It’s only like 82. When it’s like 95 degrees outside, mean there’s no one there now, no one would be out there. But the Odyssey has been closed for years, are doing anything with the Odyssey,

Jim Hill: Well, the Odyssey is one of the wonders of life, believe. It is pressed into service these days for special events, wine pairings or that sort of thing. there’s a an ambitious plan much in the same way that fantasy land has been extended reinvented in order the process of being over the magic kingdom Epcot, the heart of Epcot, the transition point between World Showcase and Future World is being eyeballed very heavily. Well, think about it. So many people come here and love to dine, but they also want to dine and watch, they want to watch Illuminations. the interesting thing is one of the primo places that you can actually watch Illuminations is Dead Center. Right here as you come up and so one of things that they’re eyeballing is You know in a weird sort of way moving the gift shops down rather than having them close to the water actually having them closer to the The entrance itself actually pushing out into the bay which has your ridiculous concrete thing right? But that then you put a giant Restaurant sort of a crystal palace that has lots of glass so you can see the affairs see the fireworks now Now if you do that though, it then proposes that if you’re redeveloping your waterfront area, you’re pushing out… Since we’ve got the bulldozers out… That’s right. Couldn’t you be doing something with Odyssey? where this gets interesting is that’s where they’ve talked about doing the Brazil. Brazil? Well, and that’s what’s funny is just lately the Brazilian press is all full of, you know, hey, Disney’s talking to us again and Disney’s like… No, we’re not. You know, and that’s the whole point of a confidential conversation, is it supposed to be a confidential conversation? Yes, we’ve actually seen tweets coming from people who said, can anyone speak Portuguese? Yes, yes. I need to translate this press release. So, going to be interesting to see that, like I said, this This plan extends beyond fantasy land. you know, now and remember, that was one of the things that frustrated people about the Cameron World of Pandora Avatar deal, is you’ve got Jay Raziddle talking about, well, we’ll just not do something we were gonna do. And it’s like…

Len Testa: So what did he just shut down? Exactly. So nobody knows where he shut down yet. Yeah.

Jim Hill: And so it’s like, what did he just pull the money for? Is that the redo of the heart of Epcot? Is that something else that was supposed to go into Animal Kingdom?

Len Testa: Amazing. So we’re inside the Mexico Pavilion right now. One of my favorite pavilions, not just because they have tequila, but because of the atmosphere and the plaza on the inside. there a, so Jim, you and I were talking about this at our meet, but one of the things I really like about what they’ve done with Mexico in terms of food and beverage is they’ve brought in, well they brought in new restaurants. now Mexico has two sit down restaurants, right? They’ve got Sena Gel, they’ve got La Hacienda, they’ve got the Cantina, and then they’ve got La Cava del Tequila. So they’ve really got four places for food and beverage. But the other interesting thing I really like about this is that since it’s not Disney run, you can actually talk to the people who run these things. So the people who are on Twitter, you could eventually meet. if you follow Kava Del Tequila on Twitter, you can actually come and ask to meet the guys who do the Twitter feed in Walt Disney World, which is really neat. you can’t get that. I let’s face it, not that I don’t love every single part of Walt Disney World, but I can’t imagine the guys at China doing that. But it’s a great thing, I really, really like it a lot. But that level of response to social media, mean, again, that’s the sort of thing where you then develop a relationship with a customer, they come back because, the guy came out and he talked to me.

Jim Hill: Exactly. So we were here on Saturday and Humberto, who’s one of the guys who does the Twitter feed, was leading the tequila thing.

Len Testa: And we know this because we were here one time tweeting out, hey, let’s go to La Cava. He, again, through Twitter, invited us in for some free chips and salsa. And so us sat there and planned to meet for 300 people. But it was literally because, hey, this guy, know, so somebody tweeted out, we tweeted back, you know, over a tequila and some chips, we said we should do meet. But those guys are really doing it. Disney’s kind getting into social media, but…

Jim Hill: It’s it’s classic Disney. We’re gonna get into social media. Let’s put an organization behind it with a strict hierarchy and an entire three ring notebook of rules around it.

Len Testa: No, that’s it exactly. That’s it exactly. Alright, so you wanna grab a drink? Sure. Thanks, Joe. So Jim and I are now walking back out of Mexico. We’ve just had a quick quality check of the wares, the sampling of the wares at Reserva de la… Sorry, at La Cava, we had some Reserva de la Familia. It was wonderful. We’re staggering now past the… This is where they did the Donald meet and greet, the three caballeros. By the way, I learned by the way yesterday at the Mexico meet where we ordered 150 margaritas that my Spanish improves with drinking.

Jim Hill: Well, to double back on the pavilion we just looked, this is the template for what they’re trying to do with all of the World Showcase pavilions. If you think about it, inside of a five-year period, you freshened up the rivers of time attraction by folding in the characters. You’ve created the character meet and greet area. You’ve totally redone your restaurant out front. You’ve added your tequila bar. You’ve totally re-energized this. You’ve created new, not only new venues for the family and new family experiences, you’ve also in cruise, you know, the amount of money you’ll make out of your restaurants and get people excited about coming back in. They’ve got four places now to spend your money on food. So this is, this is the template. This is, do you think it’s any coincidence that Mexico is run by an external group rather than Disney though?

Len Testa: Well, you know, that is that, that’s what they’re looking to do. Was it, was this a case with them where Disney said, here’s the idea that we have or maybe they came to Disney and said here’s the idea that we have and Disney let them try it because it was relatively low risk for Disney because they get a cut of that those sales right?

Jim Hill: they do they do so so really if they wanted to try it out if they wanted to put in a fourth at a fourth dining venue and they wanted to bring in you know tequila experts like Hilda they could do that this doesn’t really risk anything to Disney no but but at the same time you look at They are the ones who brought the expertise and the level of authenticity, the level of personalization. And now it’s a question of, how do you do that again? Right. What do we do then? You know, I mean, face it, we’ve walked now we’re here in Norway and we’re here at the, you know, just outside of the anchor house, which of course is where they do, you know, the princess breakfast, get the storytell, you know, the storybook dining. And you want to talk about shoehorning in something that doesn’t fit. Oh, geez. Yeah. This is so Norway.

Len Testa: I love the pavilion and I’ve actually been to Norway. I’ve been to Oslo. And so we’re sitting in front of the, the Norway pavilion right now. left is the Stave Church, which I love by the way, it’s one the iconic things. You’ve got the Puffins Roost and the Kringle Bakery Ag Cafe. You can see sort of the back of the attraction over here, back of Maelstrom, and then you’ve got Restaurant Akershus, which is, it’s the right architecture, mean, sort of rural, old, Norway does actually look like this. Interesting thing, so in Oslo, there’s a Norwegian architecture museum. But it’s not a building. It’s a collection of buildings that the Norwegian government has transported from around Norway to this one, like, you know, 500 acre park where you can literally walk in the buildings. They have literally an entire apartment block, a block of apartments in there from, you know, this is what Oslo looked like in the 1950s. They preserved it and moved it. There. This is, this is representative Norwegian architecture. Yeah. So, so actually going to Norway, I can tell you, it looks kind of like this. Yes, startling lack of princesses. Yeah, I didn’t see as many princesses, although they were all strikingly beautiful. mean, the men and women in Norway are amazing. But yeah, no princesses. And it could be so much more, although again, I will say my breakfast buffet in…

Jim Hill: Oslo in the hotel did actually have herring. I know, right? That’s bracing right there. But again, it’s just going to be interesting to watch the 10 year plan here as they walk around and attempt to do this to all the pavilions. Now, mind you, some of these things are hit and miss. I mean, as we get over to Italy, I was kind of shocked to hear about them shutting down the pizza place there for the three or four month three due. You’ve heard about this?

Len Testa: I heard the Vietnam police closing or I know the other restaurant that uh… to tell you is closing i my understanding was it was the the new pizza place that was shutting down for a review and you know startlingly so we were just there yesterday actually okay uh… i hope i’m wrong but supposedly there was some issue whether i mean sometimes it’s actually a good issue as in hey we need to increase our capacity we have you know so many more people coming right uh… but it’s always a little startling to have a facility that’s just been open suddenly close. the so I know that they don’t get a whole lot of use out of the well when we get to Italy we’ll talk about it but they don’t get a whole lot of use about it on the patio seating I never see anyone out there and that could be a that can be sure we’re coming up by the way on China guys and they’re the acrobats are actually performing right now. So it’s a little loud outside in China. is there anything going on with the China pavilion?

Jim Hill: You know, they just opened the new shopping area. Have you seen it?

Len Testa: Not yet,

Jim Hill: But as for China, yes, there’s… But the interesting thing is this is all piggybacking on Shanghai. I don’t know what you’ve heard about the entrance area for example for Shanghai Disneyland, but there’s no Main Street. There’s no Main Street in Shanghai, China? You know, there’s gonna be… I mean, there’s no retail corridor, there’s no shops. You’re gonna come into a garden. Is that a cultural thing that the Chinese government wanted to do or is that a Disney thing?

Len Testa: This Disney trying to be respectful of the Chinese culture, but I’ll tell you from chats with folks at Imagineering, they’re like… I’m not sure this is gonna work. mean, you know, but at the same time, realistically, what does turn of the century America mean to, you know, a Chinese national? It’s like, okay, interesting set of buildings. And in fact, they had an original take on the main street that was fascinating. It was literally taking iconic pieces of Disney architecture from Disney and Pixar films I met at. For example, you’d walk down a street where Gasto’s from Ratatouille is right next to the Darlings house from Peter Pan. Nice. You build the street of buildings that you recognize from classic Disney animated films leading to the castle. And that was in there. They looked at it. It’s out. Now it’s a garden. Really. And again, speaking of things that are out here, we are walking through what would have been Africa. Yes. So we’re at the African Opus for now. You may have heard the drums as we go through. They’ve turned it into a retail area, but this has got to be the largest unused space in World Showcase. think.

Jim Hill: No, absolutely. But there’s a giant expansion pad back here. And I think it’s if you ever seen the 1982… television special for the opening of Epcot. It’s literally this sad sequence where it’s Danny Kay and Alex Haley who is the author of Roots was actually going to narrate the the film that drove this attraction. They’re standing there in front of the model. it’s like…

Len Testa: Well, if you look at the Epcot book, right, the building, you know, tomorrow’s whatever, it’s got the whole thing about the Russia Pavilion, the Africa Pavilion, all the artwork is there. Everything’s there. Yeah.

Jim Hill: And in the end, it’s just this little sad moment, know, Danny shakes hands with Alex. Well, I’ll meet you back in here. It’s like, absolutely. And then, and then neither of lived to see it. Well, again, the only problem, and again, this is where it, this was what was problematic about Epcot. That, that, you know, sometimes people came forward. mean, for example, you mentioned the Russian Berlin. The, they had sponsors lined up multiple times. But the problem is Disney would all okay and go poking at who the sponsor was. And actually they’d figure out the money was coming from the Russian mafia. And these days they’d be like, okay Actually, the word would be oligarch now, wouldn’t it?

Len Testa: There you go

Jim Hill: But in the case of the African Pavilion, it kept coming back to South Africa, was the only place that came to… Blood diamonds?

Len Testa: Yes! Was it really? Seriously! And it was just one of these no-suits like, oh no Thanks, really no Yeah, and it just, again, just broke the back of it They couldn’t it made That’s funny. Ah, so we’re here It is actually October and we’re in Germany for Oktoberfest. Jim, had we not had a very lovely shot of tequila about five minutes ago, I’d be buying you a beer right now. So, what do think about the Germany Pavilion? I kind of like the outside. The thing I wish about the German Pavilion was that it needed more depth. So it’s got a restaurant, it’s got a good restaurant, right? mean, Beer Garden’s very popular, it’s good. It’s relatively easy to get into. The shopping is good as far as shopping goes. It’s actually, seems to be like decent quality stuff. There’s just no reason to come here, right? Other than you need a place to eat or you really want some some Riesling, right, wine, why would you come here?

Jim Hill: Well, we’re actually walking toward what was supposed to make you come here. So we’re walking in past through Summerfest actually. We’re walking towards a giant mural on a wall. This is an interesting entrance though for a… for a restaurant with the archway and everything like that it almost looks like the entrance to a ride. was the entrance to a ride. are, in fact, what’s sad is if you walk through that wall, in fact it’s now used as rehearsal space for high school groups who come here and perform. There is a full-size ride building back there. and it was going to be for the Rhine River ride. You were actually here, the boats were going to come up, you’d board, and then you’d float for five to ten minutes past miniature recreations of the Black Forest and great pieces of German architecture. It was going to be charming. you know…

Len Testa: Yeah, really, it’s kind of funny because we’re standing in the very front of the building. It’s where Summerfest is. They’ve installed sort of the counter service in the front here. And then there’s some tables, but dear God, it’s nothing, it looks nothing more like than the entrance to a ride. I mean, you’ve got a huge arch here. With a banner that says welcome and you’ve got actually you’ve got that you’ve got a pastoral scene. You’ve got a castle mural You’ve got you’ve got the river itself It looks like they’ll watch this space Absolutely, and if you think just how easily you drop the queue in yeah, yeah I mean you could you could definitely put a put a queue right in here very easily It would dump out inside and as you walked out you would pass the you know the the Oktoberfest restaurant and it’s like Bratwurst, I smell Bratwurst. I need the coleslaw and some hot potato salad.

Jim Hill: It was something that was supposed to happen. fact, was it a funding thing that they couldn’t find a sponsor for it? Or was it just that we’ve got enough boat rides? Well, the interesting thing is the structure was there. They built it. it’s yeah. I mean, they’ve already built the building, right? Yeah. And it’s sort of like in the case of the Japanese pavilion where they had built the structure to put the meet the world show in. I mean, it’s still back there. They have this giant show building that no show went into. And now it’s used for temporary storage. And, you know, it just The belief was that okay in year two three you know we’ll add this stuff but not understanding that in year two three of Epcot’s life 1983 1984 Oh recession. Not only that but you change out Disney’s management. know.

Len Testa: yeah nobody yeah so that was the that was the beginning of the Eisenhower era right that was the end of the Miller era. So we’re walking up now we’re leaving Germany we’re walking past the bathrooms on our left and the miniature train set which I love by the way. It’s adorable.

Jim Hill: But yeah, so much was going to happen and just ultimately, you know, just again, ICER came in and you have to just say one of the reasons ICER came in is Disney stock took a severe hit after Epcot opened because it was like now suddenly the financial community was actually paying attention to what Epcot’s attendance was because this was his $800 million project. $800 million. It’s adorable. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, that was kind of the beginning of the end for that management team. Now, mind you, Card Walker… set up Ron Miller and Ron Miller got a lot of stuff going. mean, whether from the Disney Channel to Touchstone, I mean, the first Disney adult films, but just didn’t get enough time.

Len Testa: that’s amazing. So we’re coming up on Italy right now. We’re passing the gelato and espresso stand. We’re coming up on the replica of the St. Mark’s Square, the Basilica. You’ve got the juggler out. That’s very good. So interesting thing. I was in Italy earlier this year and I was in Vicenza so it’s halfway between Milan and Venice in the Veneto. Lovely place. It’s actually got a square that I swear to God looks almost exactly like this. Obviously it’s much larger but it’s got sort of this building. It’s got this campanile, this bell tower right here and then it’s got shops like this. The only thing that would be different, real Italy has far more gelato and shoe stores than Epcot does. I mean really like it’s like It’s like the entire business of Italy, as far as can tell, is selling ice cream, shoes, and leather goods.

Jim Hill: Well, maybe some of the Disney can make a nice shoe-shaped ice cream bar.

Len Testa: Honestly, if they put a shoe store in here and they sold gelato outside, it would be Italy, as far as I’m concerned. Wow. OK. It was lovely. was lovely. So anything going on with the Italy people?

Jim Hill: Not so much, but I… Well, they got the two restaurants around us, so they’ve got a Viannappoli that just opened. We ate lunch there yesterday. It was fabulous. They are like any other restaurant, or actually any other country in Epcot. They are looking to increase the amount of character interaction. In Italy, really? And well, they’re looking to actually do… In fact, it’s kind of bit them in the butt. They were working with Julie Taymor to do a… a live stage version of Pinocchio and they’re actually going to bring those interpretations of the characters here but Julie kinda went dark and then Julie kinda went to go work on Spider-Man and I think we all know how that ended so I don’t know if that’s actually gonna happen but it’s interesting you’ve stopped here between America and Italy because you’ll notice there’s a large chunk of space here yeah there is actually so between Italy and the United States Pavilion this actually was going to be out behind the American Pavilion they were plans based on how well Epcot did during its opening years to build and it just boggles the mind to hear this a second lagoon.

Len Testa: So a lagoon like a figure eight shaped lagoon?

Jim Hill: Well more to the effect of a large reflecting pool type lagoon the idea was there would be space back there for upwards of five to six more pavilions and what they wanted to do was actually dropped the soviet union at the other end of the reflecting pool so you have you know america across from its you know and united you know i think it was the freedom pool or they were they were discussing something to that effect that’s classic yeah but the interesting thing is that that was of course before they built you know point of vista street or bonavista avenue whatever they call out there and more to the point the Caribbean. In fact, where the Caribbean Hotel is sitting right now is pretty much where the Soviet Pavilion would have been sitting.

Len Testa: my god, that’s amazing. You know, but at the same time, mean, there are huge pieces, expansion beds, and you just don’t see them because of the ornamentation. mean, for example, when they were going to do the Swiss Pavilion, was going to, obviously because Switzerland stands between Germany and Italy, it was going to be dropped there with the Matterhorn out behind all of these places. Yeah, um, no, it’s, you know, you have to understand that there was a time that Epcot, hoped to have 32 countries in here. Wow, and so they’ve almost tripled what they have now. Well, for opening day they only had eight. Alright, let’s depart Italy and head to the often-misnamed United States Pavilion. I swear to God, Jim, it’s not called the American Adventure. That’s the name of the attraction that’s on the inside. The outside is the United States Pavilion.

Jim Hill: good, No, that’s… It’s kind of a fascinating attraction in that they tried and tried and tried to come up with a way to make this work. You know, one version, was a flume ride where you were going by figures, you know, of American folklore while… Daniel Boone, David Crockett. Paul Bunyan. Paul Bunyan? Seriously. And, but again, with a blaring, you know, this land is your land, this land is my land. And then from there, finally after like the third try and they actually brought in a Hollywood filmmaker as an outside contractor and I’ve been trying for… upwards of 10 years to get the name of the guy who turned in the really lousy version of American Adventure. Yep. And finally, Randy Bright was like, well, look, let me try. And he’s the one who came up with the show. He’s the one who came up with the whole war wagon concept of film elements and AA figures and all that. And it works. Mind you, it, you know, because of course they had to get a sponsor. Okay. Sorry, Jimmy. want to pause your, I just heard for second. So it’s food and wine.

Len Testa: You expect to see people walking around with alcohol this dude just walked by us with a beer in each hand and then a frozen slushy alcoholic drink cupped it grabbed in his mouth He’s holding onto it by his teeth. I love food and wine Jim. I love food and wine That’s American ingenuity at its finest. That’s what it is right there. That’s what made this country great. Anyway, again, he comes up with a concept The rest is they say it’s history But again, it’s only what they could get American Express and Coca-Cola to agree to. A fine company by the way, American Express. But, you know, just the whole notion of, we’re going touch on slavery, we’re going touch on World War II, and speaking of which, we’re coming up on the Japanese Pavilion and this, they actually had built the… So it’s interesting that the United States Pavilion is between Italy and Japan, two countries that we fought in World War II. We’re gonna put Morocco there right in Germany, right? So it’s it’s German It’s like the acts of the axis powers right between the American is it but we’re all friends now. That’s true We’re all friends, right, you know anyway, they did the it was actually World War two that that defeated In a weird sort of way the meet the world attraction coming into Japan. I mean they built the structure and But the word began to get out that when the show was installed you know for tokyo disneyland and i want you to send what’s weird about the stories tokyo disneyland opens in eighty three right there and so obviously again meet the world was going to be a phase two attraction was going to show you know open as the park at more popular but as people began to go over and visit tokyo disneyland and it literally get to the moment in the story of the history of japan where World War II was going to occur. they’re in the middle part of the 20th century. there’s just, the theater goes black. There’s a thunderous crash. And basically the narration says, and then something bad happened. And then it’s almost dot dot dot. And then, we, you know, we learned from those times and we became the nation we are now. And it was like, it’s like, wait a minute. In the state that is filled with World War II retirees, you’re going to put in an attraction that goes dot dot dot and then something bad happens. And I was like, that’s it. No, no sale. I mean, was just like, no, we can’t do that. And, um, and Disney then couldn’t go to its, you know, its partners at Oriental Land Company go, Oh, by the way, we’re going to change the attraction that you spent all that money on and put it in a World War II scent. That would have been offenses to them. So, so here we are. Wow. That’s amazing. So, uh, so what we got though, from a Japan pavilion actually is pretty spectacular. It’s one of the best, I think, executed pavilions, for one, without a ride. So this is, think, you contrast what Japan has with what Germany has, neither pavilion has a ride. I think Japan is much more interesting. Number one, it’s got a huge retail space, the former Mitsukoshi department store here on the ground floor. Up above you’ve got two different restaurants. You’ve got Tokyo dining and the grill. But farther back though, they’ve used the space farther back now, they’ve got a sort of a food retail thing where you can do sake samples. And then to the right, they do, they always do some sort of Japanese art. It could be, you know, cartoons or animation. One time it was tin toys, sports. And now it’s been, for a couple of years now, it’s been spirited animals, but it’s… It’s an interesting display because it’s a nice little walkthrough too. But at the same time you look literally you see this gateway. This was how you were supposed to enter. You go through these double doors and in fact you can actually see the giant set of doors that were going to be meatballed. Oh yeah so we’re actually walking farther into the Japan Pavilion. We’re coming up on the… If you guys are familiar with it you walk towards the back and there’s this nice little bridge. And it’s a sort of covered arch and you walk through the arch and I think there’s what? There’s a horse? A horseman? A samurai on horse on one side but then it’s a huge set of very formal, very heavy looking double doors like eight inches thick each and then that leads to the bridge and then that leads to the back part. It’s set up like a a courtyard like an imperial courtyard. Absolutely. But at the same time it was you driving you in again you literally that’s where just meet the world right there. That’s where the sign was supposed to be. Wow. That’s impressive. Yeah. This is a this is a great entrance. So you walk past you walk past the entrance arch and there’s this moat on a castle and you’ve got these huge rocks going up you know three or four stories to this curved sort of Asian art curved arts roof roof line and you’ve got you’ve got the it is like it’s like entering a castle this is fantastic. The color scheme is very consistent you’ve got the grays you’ve got the dark woods going in but it’s really a well conceived attraction. You have this dramatic entrance to nothing. You’ve got gallery space. again this could have been a ride. But the funny thing is that again Eisner comes on board he walks around Nebcar it’s like look we need thrill rides. and one of the things they were looking at is like, well, it has no mountains. So there was one weird moment where they were not only talking about building, know, bringing the Matterhorn, which by the way, the Matterhorn, they tried to bring the Matterhorn to Florida multiple times. fact, it was… is the world’s first tubular steel roller coaster. hear anyway, it’s a rumor going around. But Nunes actually wanted to build it in the back of Fantasyland. In fact, what he wanted to do was that the train would go through the Matterhorn And as you the train was rolling through they do a snow scene and you will literally get the blast of ice nice nice But here you know that so they had the model and so they think they drop it in behind Italy and Germany and it’s just like okay could work there, but here they were thinking well wait a minute Why don’t we do a Japan bullet train? What’s your mouth Fuji? Okay, but here’s where it gets interesting so yeah, why couldn’t they make a double train well? Here’s the problem you start by being Mount Fuji When the film company that you have to deal with for the entire theme park is Kodak. Okay, Fuji film. Yeah, so so they were so the the Kodak has got wind of this and said Can we have a call? Can we have a phone call on this? So now the project gets named Fire Mountain. good. Fire? Sounds like Adventureland. Okay. But, you know, but again, this is Eisner walking in the door. This is the Hollywood guy. And it’s like, you know what? Need something in there. And I swear to God, I mean, this sounds so unlikely, but I have talked to the Imaginers and they actually showed me the drawing. The bullet train was going to bring you three times over the course of the road in close proximity with Godzilla. me counterintuitive because you’re running out of energy at the end of a roller coaster. But you looped over Godzilla’s head and through his mouth and then you went into a… Like as the mouth was closing?

Jim Hill: Well just, I think he was… Oh he’s eating you. He’s supposed to be eating you. Ah, so again, if that was the concept I totally would not have got it the first time I wrote it. But again, it was one of these things where they went to Toho and Toho said, that’s very nice. And we would like this much money. And Disney said, don’t really like it that much. Toho being the guys that own the rights to take Godzilla. There you go. So again, propose, not build.

Len Testa: That’s amazing. So the Godzilla thing would have been interesting. And the funny thing is, is it probably would have looped back now because there was a mini Godzilla revival. Five years ago, right? But who knows what they could have done with with Disney’s with Disney’s backing on it. More to the point, there’s another Godzilla movie coming in like weeks. Is there really another Godzilla movie? Yeah. Really? So we’re walking up on we’re walking up on Morocco right now past and again, is is food and wine. And it’s more importantly, it’s food and wine in the afternoon past quitting time when more locals are out. We’ve got quite a quite a crowd coming up on Morocco. Morocco, Jim, actually, I think is my favorite pavilion in all of World Showcase. love the design and I love the architecture. I was young the first time I came here. Did they used to be a film here?

Jim Hill: No. No film? was just imagining? They had a tourism video something? I mean literally there was one of the shops that sort of had a magic mirror.

Len Testa: That’s it, that’s what I remember. Let’s walk through the Morocco Pavilion. It honestly has some of their very best theming. So the thing that I like about it is the paths aren’t linear, so it kind of curves around. And there are multiple ways to get there. It’s almost like a Moroccan market. The no one ever goes in the sword. We’re facing the pavilion You’ve got the sort of the archway the blue archway in front of us to our left is a is a display on Moroccan style. So it’s personal artifacts from Morocco. I swear to God nobody ever goes in it. We’re standing here right now No one is is opening the doors. It’s air-conditioned. It’s quiet. I guarantee Jim we go in there’s two people or less now Let’s go try it out. So we’re going through the Morocco pavilion one of the interesting things about the Morocco pavilion is that If I understand correctly didn’t didn’t the king send over like his personal? is personal artists to work on this, but so we’re in the space and there’s exactly two people besides Jimena. But it’s totally funded by the royal family. It’s a wonderful space, by way. It’s really nice. So the thing I love about this is we’re into the, we’re into the Morocco, by the way, Jimena and are the only people in the Morocco Valley, but look at the intricate tile work of the stucco on the walls. This isn’t just a flat wall. There’s All sorts of geometric patterns in the walls and each one these are done by hand. This is not, know, hey, we’re going to stamp this out in a factory in China and we’re going go do this. This is all done by hand. It’s amazing. The tile work, but even look at the ceiling. The ceiling is the same way. Literally it’s floor to ceiling. Nothing but detail. The intricate artwork on the wood that keeps you on the sides. It’s really nice. All of the tile work, mean years and years and years of craftsmanship went into this. You smell the leather. smell the It’s right. It’s cool in here. dark, it’s quiet, it’s incredibly detailed. We’re entering what might be actually my entire favorite space in all of Epcot. So you go through the back door of the Moroccan style display and you enter into this fabulous courtyard. It’s a two-story courtyard and there’s a fountain in the back. It’s two stories, you look up top and it’s incredibly detailed. all tile on the bottom, tiled columns, it’s got four columns on each side. It’s just a beautiful space. It’s open at the top, it’s a square. On the bottom floor is nothing but tiled walls, blues, yellows, reds, greens. On the second floor is sort of a white wash, a white stucco with brown wood balusters all around. then these incredibly, these very pretty lamps in shades of yellow, green, and red. And it’s opened up to a beautiful blue sky. The thing I love about this is… It’s a great place to sit and relax. Very few people ever come in here, very few people actually make it this far back in the pavilion, number one, Number two, it’s got little benches set up for just sitting and relaxing, and you notice it’s all in the shade too. And then you’ve got the fountain over here, so you’ve got a little bit of noise. I think this is my favorite space in all of it.

Jim Hill: Yeah, and the sad thing is the time this most often got used. Do you remember when Hulk Hogan and Chris Lemon were shooting that action series here? This was… They did that on Seven Seas Lagoon. Well, but you you remember they fought terrorists. they were literally… I mean this became the unnamed Arab country in countless… Morocco did? Yes, in countless episodes. So they would stay all sorts of… you can hear this tranquil, wonderfully detailed courtyard would be full of, you know, squibs and the fake machine guns so Hulk and Chris Lemon could defeat the evil. But yeah, that was in the day when they were using Epcot basically as their backdrop for these foreign sets. Yeah, traveling the world.

Len Testa: So now we’re in the very back of the courtyard. We’ve got there’s again. There’s another front in the distance. We’ve got a restaurant Marrakesh here. Have been in a restaurant Marrakesh?

Jim Hill: Yeah, it’s one of my favorite restaurants and it never gets it’s never crowded by the way Do see the see Heather doing water runoff here on the walls? So the water comes up from the ceiling and then it runs down instead of pouring off It comes down here and then ends up circulating here. It’s a very nice way of doing I love Morocco. No, you have to, if you’re going to make it back to Marrakesh, you have to do the tea ceremony here. Have you ever done that?

Len Testa: No, I’ve never done this tea ceremony. What time is it? time do do it?

Jim Hill: Actually, I’d say, again, I did this like five or six years ago. I’m not sure what the times are today, but it is such an elaborate presentation. mean, it’s at the restaurant, at the restaurant, a tea ceremony. Then it’s they do this, this hot mint tea that you, it’s so counterintuitive. You would think you’re in Florida. This shouldn’t be refreshing. It’s mint. It’s mint and it just it’s gotta be cool. Yeah. No, no, seriously If you can make sure to get there for the tea ceremony, it’s just it’s amazing. Is it part of a meal or you just just show up?

Len Testa: Well, they get it. That’s the weirdest part is that they get so little attention back there. It’s true, know, it’s like hi We’re here for the tea ceremony. Oh, okay so it’s funny cuz Morocco is number one Morocco is my the restaurant where I take people who Don’t aren’t sure whether they’re gonna like ethnic food Number one, because you can always get in last minute. Number two, literally every single person I’ve ever taken here has been surprised about how good it is. There’s really nothing wrong with the menu.

Jim Hill: And more to the point, this was actually the first pavilion that was built after Epcot opened. Obviously China opened somewhat late and there were individual films and that sort of thing. But this sort of gave you the sense of what they could do if they had full support and full money. From a government-sized entity. Have you ever been to a tangerine cafe by the way?

Len Testa: No, can’t Oh, it’s fabulous! So they’ve got shawarma, so they’ve got lamb and chicken and beef and stuff. It’s really good. Yeah, actually it’s one of the… We ate here for our pre-half marathon lunch. It was great. But you know, the saddest part of this story is that there are so many people who will use the bathrooms next to Morocco, but will not go into Morocco. The bathrooms are pretty popular, but yeah, it’s amazing because it’s a wonderful… it’s a wonderful attraction. Hey, between here and France, there’s actually enough space for a small pavilion. Like a Luxembourg. Not a pavilion, but the actual country itself. Actually, what’s fascinating, if you ever manage to get backstage… You mean legally yes all right between France and Morocco Every single one of the food things that we’ve the little individual food carts that were walking by here the pork yep Whatever they that’s where they live the rest of the yeah. So we they they walk us back there for the before the marathon and the half marathon so it’s funny because you can actually You know you’re walking back there. It’s like four o’clock in the morning They’re walking you back to the race start for the half marathon so you’re going behind stage backstage at the and you’re walking past the food and wine booths, but they’re just shuttered. They’re all there. You can see the names on them. You can see Belgium and Canada and stuff like that. But there’s nothing there. It’s really weird. It is, is.

Jim Hill: But at the same time, I’m just a fan of how the machine that is a theme park works. Yep, and that’s where they store them. They don’t store them in a warehouse. They store them outside. I think they just touch up the paint every year. No, that’s it. That’s it exactly. Just dress them up, them out. They’re there for the six weeks and they sit and wait for the next Seat Center shows. Sure, so we’re walking away to France right now. So we’re packing passing back the Crepes stand and then there’s a champagne stand. To our left is, is this Chef de France? Which is amazingly popular. You’d think French food would not be that popular.

Len Testa: The thing that I like about France, it feels like France, right? So there’s little alleyways and stuff that you walk through. The thing that amazes me about the attraction, well two things really. One is the film hasn’t changed. Number two, if you’re looking at the pavilion, so we’re facing the Eiffel Tower, the Chefs de France is to our left. We’ve got fountains in front of us. We’ve got the film straight ahead. There’s a pretty big distance between us where we’re at and the right. It’s a garden and then there’s a huge space back over here that really isn’t used for anything. If you go past the Parfumier, there’s really nothing over there. you wonder like, was that… Let’s walk this way. Walk it up. So we’re walking up the street. We’ve got, again, we’re walking. Chef’s is on our left. Impression de France. The theater is in front of us. We’ve got the perfume place to our right. But Jim, I want to show you this over here. This is where I think they should have moved the patisserie over here and put the parfumerie over there And I don’t know why they did it because if you walk through here Alright, if you walk through the the Beaux Arts gallery In the library, there’s a there’s a lovely little arcade right here, right and it’s sort of like a French arcade, right? Like they have in Disneyland Paris, but you walk through this side and we’re walking through it now. It smells really good actually. So after a day of walking around in front of a smelly tourist to walk through the perfume place in France, by the way, is a huge, huge relief, I must say. So we come out on on the quai, and there’s nothing here. Okay, they’re getting ready to do an aurora meet and greet or something, but, but there’s really nothing, I this is beautiful space. You’ve got flowers everywhere. You’ve got, you’ve got the, the river and the, the lake in the background you’ve got this it’s usually a paris behind you look there’s like six people here this this to me is like this is a completely unused space okay.

Jim Hill: there was at one time a plan for a crazy cabs through the streets of paris ride i mean a kind of a mr toad’s wild ride. The wild ride to Mr. Toad?

Len Testa: the wild ride to Monster Toad. There we go.

Jim Hill: As opposed to… I’m not doing the frog-leg jokes. The why… No, wait. It actually… Sorry, I’m doing iterations of this joke. It’s the ride wild to Monster Toad. There we go. But, you know, they just recognize… In fact, that’s… I remember… Talking with Gary Goddard about this and they were you know after a while it was like they were doing every pillion It’s like you gotta be kidding me. It’s another movie, and we need rides We need rides and so they wanted to do you know just figure it’ll be fun We’ll just do so a silly version of Paris and the car will rock back and forth and you know and in the end You know they did the proposal they had the artwork They just couldn’t find a sponsor and more to the point a lot of the people they approached you know neck you know you know Like the car company so it’s got a Peugeot and it’s like you know it’s like you know they were offended you know Tom you know everybody they went to.

Len Testa: And really it’s funny because I’ve seen the theme park attractions that Peugeot sponsors. They could do better. So they’ve actually got this ride in Alton Towers. It’s Peugeot mini drivers or something, whatever it’s called. But it’s the lowest capacity theme park attraction I’ve ever seen in my life. There’s no way it can get 60 people per hour, 60 people per hour.

Jim Hill: If you could go out and give people massages faster than that. Yes, so Peugeot could have done better. So I think they said no to the wrong company here. But again, so many of these Epcot pavilions were supposed to have a phase two. mean, for example, we’re going be crossing the bridge shortly. we’re going over this bridge. Is this the that was inspired by the Pont des Arts? That’s That’s correct. But for England alone, there was the English Music Hall. There was the River Thames attraction. There was even the Christmas Carol ride through. all of them designed. know, mean, that one, literally you were going to go buy show scenes out of Christmas Carol, whether it was the ghost of Christmas present. Just thinking of the souvenirs. And actually, Germany has a little bit of a Christmas place, but they totally could have done that. Wasn’t the postcard invented in Greek? The Christmas card was invented in Greek. I believe so. I do believe so. But in the end, it opened. Epcot did OK, but not the sort of attendance levels that Disney had promised and that was kind of the beginning of the end for that iteration of the Disney Company’s management team. That was when the green mailers may begin. Right, That’s the beginning of the end and the entrance. So here’s the funny thing, Jim. So we just walked through German sausage. We walked through pasta in Italy. We walked through baklava and coffee in Morocco. We just walked through wine in France. Now they make you walk up a steep bridge. is really your car. Are you dead yet?

Jim Hill: Well, you know, that was always the story about Alfredos. that yeah in Italy yeah I mean so yeah so fettuccine alfaretto is like 27 or 2800 calories right most of it bad fat literally people go in and eat the giant bowl of you know fettuccine carbonara and start to walk around the world show because and literally they’d make it in fact my understanding is they literally begin to put the the tribulators either side of Italy yeah it’s like okay so you know they typically make it as far as Japan you know so we’re gonna put the So if we need to run electrical lines for the defibrillators, it’s gonna be Japan.

Len Testa: That’s awesome. That’s beautiful. Alright, so we’re gonna walk through the English garden here. You know, Jim, as far as I’m concerned, nothing says a walk through the, a trip to the English countryside, except for meeting a man named Trevor. Hello, Trevor! Oh, Doctor Who? Actually, Timekeeper, but okay. There we go. So we’re walking through the back of the UK pavilion right now, which has like… England, think, is an old country. It’s what, three, four, five hundred years old? Just kidding, just kidding. Don’t want to get into all that. It’s got examples of every piece of English architecture here. It’s also got a nice little hedge maze, which is pretty popular in English amusement parks, by the way. And the backspace here is lovely. Number one, it’s quiet. There’s only like three people here. Number two, it’s shaded and they’ve got benches. But here, right in front of us, in fact, you can see a little bit of the International Village. we’re actually walking towards the back of the UK. We’re facing out towards the landscape. And behind us is what used to be the Millennium Village. Remember back in 2000, was a big… Epcot was the host park for the Millennium celebration. We’re looking back towards the structure that hosted the Millennium Village stuff. That was, by the way, if ever there was something that was designed while people were on drugs, Millennium Village. Absolutely. Do you remember the Israel ride? So it was a ride through biblical times and I swear to God, this is actually the first conversation you and I ever had where I knew that we would like each other. Chim and I are talking about the Millennium Village ride and we’re recounting our experience going through the Israel ride. So you got on board a ride and it was like a motion simulator but it didn’t have a roof so you were looking at a film projection and you met, was it Moses?

Jim Hill: yeah. met Moses and he was taking you through history.

Len Testa: And I was telling Jim this and we both said it almost exactly the same time. Like literally 30 seconds into the film, didn’t you think you were in a Mel Brooks film? at any minute you were waiting for the 10,000 year old man to come out, right?

Jim Hill: I’m 30 seconds into this thinking this is either incredibly bad or it’s going to be the best Mel Brooks thing ever. And Mel never showed.

Len Testa: And he never showed him. Yeah.

Jim Hill: But literally, if he would have showed up at the end, would have been brilliant parody. Speaking of Mel, and we’ll get to this at some point at the studio, but remind me to talk to you at some point about Hotel Mel, where literally, the Tower of Terror was going to be basically in celebration of young Frankenstein. Actually, I got… Craig McNair Wilson who worked with Mel on this thing said it was the greatest gig in the world. were never going make the attraction but Mel would come over every Friday to the Disney studio and we worked for like a half hour and then he’d go on the patio at the Disney studio commissary and he would proceed to tell his show business stories. It was the greatest time of my life. Great, great, great stories.

Len Testa: Line, we’re coming up on World Showcase players here. I think we’re gonna have to walk around them to get to the UK. But there’s your first iteration of Street-Misphere. That’s right, it was, wasn’t it? Yeah. Let’s walk through the sports shop here. The SAC Theatre created these, was so successful. In fact, again, that’s Craig McNair-Wilson, who worked with them and helped develop these shows. and he in turn went off to do all of the Street and the Sphear for Disney Hollywood Studios, or then Disney and Jim. Yeah, the Street and the Sphear characters are actually very, good. I like them a lot. like them quite a bit. So they’re also using this store as part of Kim Possible, right? one of interesting things about Kim Possible is you can actually go in the stores and do interactions.

Jim Hill: Yeah, mean, that’s actually one of things I love about that game. And in fact, it makes me a little concerned about Trying to sort of retrofit that sort of next-gen adventure into… The Parks, mean, for example, they play-tested and prototyped a National Treasures version for not the studios, mind you, but for the Magic Kingdom. it totally would have worked in the Magic Kingdom. Well, it was around Liberty Square, was around Frontierland, but in the end it was just sort of like, this was kind of when Nicolas Cage was spinning in and the worry was, I don’t think we’re doing National Treasure 3 now, though. Bruckheimer insists they are, so, I mean, it’s a good franchise. was great. it’s, know, I get it. So it’s one of those things where, well, how many American conspiracies can we get into? Yeah, that’s the thing. It starts to look like a, was it Dan Brown? You read the first, what was the first one?

Len Testa: DaVinci Code. The DaVinci Code, yeah. The first one, can cut it. The second one, you’re like, okay, I get the picture, right? You don’t need to go on for 500 pages. Did you have a third one? He has a third one too, right? Yeah, yeah. In fact, isn’t that to be coming out? I’ve read two. I literally have read them all.

Jim Hill: All I know is that both Tom Hanks and Ron Howard are like, you know, we’re good. Yeah, you know what? It was a magical time in my life. I will always remember our collaboration fondly. Thank you. Good night.

Len Testa: That’s why we’re coming up on Canada right now I Do love a Canada. I’ve been in Canada many times. She went to Vancouver this summer. It a lot of fun. Thank you people in it What do they call people in Vancouver Vancouverans? Lucky so Vancouver the people in Vancouver have to be the luckiest in the world number one They’ve got the mountains number two. They’ve got the ocean number three. They’ve got free health care And they’ve got martin short actually. Did you see Martin Short do the cameo on How I Met Your Mother?

Jim Hill: No! He’s doing How I Met Your Mother now. It a circle. Oh, cool. It’s nice. Good for him.

Len Testa: Alright, you wanna walk up? Sure. So we’re walking up the Canada Pavilion right now. Maple Syrup to your left. The funny thing is, Circle Vision closed? Oh, looks like it’s closed. Oh, enter right and it’ll show you. Are they doing construction here? Yep. Jim, did something used to be in this building?

Jim Hill: okay, sorry guys, sorry. in neglected dimension, so the hotel facade is completely wrapped right now in some sort of construction wrapper. So it’s the picture of the facade, but you can’t actually see the building itself and behind it is more construction stuff. Looks like they’re doing something on the inside. Restaurant space? They wouldn’t put up a wrapper that big unless there was something going No, absolutely, absolutely. But again, remember what we were talking about in regard to what was going over at Mexico. this is, you know, sort of take an individual element, buff it out. You know, they have just, well, not just, we’re talking two, three years now for the Martin Short thing. They’ve redone that. They’re looking to do some new entertainment offerings. But at the same time, it was what we were talking about earlier, that I’m always fascinated by these wraps that they throw around the buildings because it’s… It’s actually a guest recovery thing that they found that people complained less about their photographs being ruined by construction.

Len Testa: All right. If they just threw a blue tar, people would freak out. Yeah.

Jim Hill: But now to have something like this, which means that it’s an approximation of what the building looked like. It means your shot still sort of kind of works. Yeah. If you’re not looking really closely, if you’re looking at the people in the picture and not the buildings, it kind of makes sense. Absolutely. And what do you think is going here? So by the way, so we’re looking at the back of the pavilion. To our right is, sorry, our left is the retail space with the giant totem poles in front of it. But then the main building itself, again, a huge wrapper. If they were just painting that, well, I guess they could be just painting it, but that seems like an awful lot of detail just to paint. You know, to be honest, I haven’t heard anything about this, but I will go dig and find out. interesting thing is, and I’ll just mention this, there is no counter service restaurant in Canada. And it’s extremely difficult to get into La Celia because now it’s a, so it’s a two table service credit signature, Disney signature restaurant. No table service. If I had to go out on a limb here, I’d say thats either retail or it’s dining because they’ve gotten neither. Now we do have, you know, I’m looking at both stairs and a ramp, so it’s ADA accessible. There’s nothing there. mean, there’s actually nothing back there either. So on either side of the building, so you’ve got some of sort of like Newfoundland type stone cottages to the left of the path and to the right you get the huge building. You could put a kitchen there.

Len Testa: but isn’t this the queue for Icar- Oh, Canada.

Jim Hill: No, no, the Q’s the Q’s from the back. Remember you go up the stairs? Well, that’s what I’m saying. get past the waterfall and then you down the stairs and then you go to the left. Well, but this is still the feeder line for that, right?

Len Testa: So it’s got a… The feeder line, goes, goes, well, number one, when was the time there was a line that long for Oh Canada? Alright, never mind. Number two, even if there was the line, they’ve got, remember inside Oh Canada, they’ve got that huge lobby to hold some people. Then you could back out all the way. If you wanted to run the queue, you could run the queue towards the water- falls and leave this just for a restaurant service. Oh, all right. We’ll meet back here at the next podcast.

Jim Hill: Yeah, we’ll meet. Yeah, so maybe six months from now we’ll redo this one.

Len Testa: Let’s walk past LaSalle and see what’s going on. Have you been here since it’s been the two-table service credit?

Jim Hill: No, I have not. But again, I know about the dangers of eating cheese soup in Florida. Yeah. It’s lovely.

Len Testa: I told you the story about meat and cheese soup, right? No. So Pam Brandon writes the Disney cookbooks for Disney. She’s one of the authors of the Disney cookbooks. I contacted Pam and I said, hey, I love the cheddar cheese soup at Canada. Can you send me the recipe? So she sends me the recipe and now I’m a guy, right? The idea of proportion in dining doesn’t do me any good. I should have been suspicious when the first ingredient on the list was a pound of bacon. I wanted a cup of soup, Jim. She made me two gallons of soup. but you know, once you start making it, So I made two gallons of cheddar cheese soup. So it’s bacon, onion, cream, and it’s like four pounds of cheese, right? Like a gallon of heavy cream, like two chopped onions and a pound of bacon plus the bacon fat. And that’s all I ate for a week. At the end of it, I smelled like onion and bacon. It was just exuding from my pores, but I was so happy. What are the point that it says something about your health received that you your heart valves did not close?

Jim Hill: That I didn’t seize that I didn’t seize it So we’re looking over the butcher gardens the gardens thing you get the little building in the back That’s actually the sort of the cast member stuff for the very we’re looking back towards the Rocky Mountains. It really is a lovely pavilion. It’s one of the most scenic. I think it’s a villain What’s interesting is that you know in fact we’re working at another Weathal Rogers was the guy who did a lot of the mountain sculpting for Disney. Yep. And it’s it’s interesting to watch how he worked and you know I mean he did Big Thunder he did and if you compare the work that was done here with say the work that was done on Expedition Everest right clearly you know there’s a level of sophistication you know to building fake rocks. yeah yeah I mean if you think about how Expedition Everest looks as compared to the rocks that we’re looking at here which so the Expedition Everest mountainside is much more weathered and pointy here the rocks are much more angular Again, the edges are rounded so it’s gone through some weathering but they’re much more chunky I would say.

Len Testa: Yeah, but again the interesting thing is when you’re down in among it, when you’re walking along the stream, you buy this. totally, yeah could be in a canyon somewhere in the Rockies. You can’t buy off on it quite as well, where on the other hand Expedition Everest works from a lot of different angles. Yeah, from the bridge in Africa, from the bridge coming in from Dino Land. all just works. true.

Jim Hill: That’s why, you know, I of all people I’m going to be fascinated to see how they pull out Pandora. know, just the whole notion of… That’s a huge engineering and design problem. That’ll be interesting. I did get somebody though to confirm that this may be the place where, and I guess they’re doing the daytime test to see if they can pull it off, but have you seen the magic, the memories in me show on that’s projected on yeah, it’s fabulous. I think it’s better in Walt Disney World than in Disneyland.

Len Testa: Well, in fact, I was watching it from the bridge into Fantasyland near Tomorrowland. You’ve got a much bigger chunk of the castle. It’s better canvas, yeah.

Jim Hill: Yeah, because they do it on the small world facade, which is pretty big actually in Disneyland, but it’s not the same sort of scope as the castle. But supposedly the projection effect that they do for the castle is how they’re going to do literally the moon of Pandora. the shimmering? It’s a great effect. Yeah, no, absolutely. For those of you that are listening that haven’t seen Magic Memories in You, a couple of things. One, go out on YouTube and look for the show. But number two, look for the similar kinds of effects. The first time I saw it was in Europe, actually, back three or four years ago. They had taken a house for Christmas and had done a ghost project- Sorry, Halloween, not Christmas. Had done a ghost projection on the- So they made the actual- The house turned from a regular house to a ghost house. So the house became a ghost. And it turned from brown to white and then it shimmered and stuff. was amazing. So they can do that with Pandora. That’s interesting. And in fact, to sort of bring this full circle to do the, back to who we started talking about today, John Hench. John had this idea, mean the interesting thing is Disney attractions have to be, you know have to have so many people go through them an hour, have to, you know, that they have to be, you know, have to be able to operate, you know, seven days a week. Yeah. And John proposed, look, what if we went the other way? What if, you know, for example, we had a vacant lot on Main Street and and then the sun goes down and fog rises up and then you look back in the lot and there’s a house there that wasn’t there before. Nice. literally you enter the attraction through that. It’s just the whole notion of doing attractions after dark, doing special shows. In fact, they did a full presentation. They did a mock-up of Pirates of the Caribbean. The interesting thing is in the Pirates of the Caribbean building, the boats are actually kept inside the building but they’re gonna track thats just behind the facade yep which means there’s an entire loop that people don’t go on and so the idea was that when the Sun went down the attraction would close for about a half hour they’d reset so literally you now would float through these new scenes and now you would just do these projected light effects where you know you you’d have your pirates but now they you’d project desiccated faces on them and you’d then also send people through the back section and have an entire new show scenes. Nice, nice.

Len Testa: But again, that’s, that, this is, you know, the problem is again, you’ve got to get thousands of people through an hour and more to the point people get disappointed if they can’t get on their favorite attractions.

Jim Hill: Right. So yeah, you can’t limit it to 500 people a night or something like that. absolutely. Ah, it’s a shame. Ah, this is wonderful. All right. Well, any, final words on Epcot, Jim?

Jim Hill: I think we should definitely revisit this in, six months or so. No, no, absolutely. Absolutely. No, Epcot is, you know, it’s an ambitious park that, you know, in the end, when you look at the craft of it, I mean, Yes, you know future world is a little too corporate and yes, you know, there aren’t enough countries. But when you think about how many people come here and particularly this time of night after work on a month random Monday. Yeah, I mean, you know all the locals that turn out or how many of the other parks, you know dump get it out of. I mean think about you know Animal King’s Coldest League at five today all the people who are coming over here to eat and to enjoy this and to have a site You know right by the water to watch a Lumina—

Len Testa: I mean, this is how tens of thousands of people every night end their Walt Disney World vacation. It’s true. You know, it’s not a bad way to go. It’s the place that I end up every night. It is my favorite theme park and I’m excited to see what might develop here. Alright, well for Jim Hill, this is Len Tosta. Thanks very much for listening to the show. There are a couple of other episodes available for the Animal Kingdom, for the Magic Kingdom Resorts, and for the Magic Kingdom. We hope you guys listen to that. Thanks very much for listening and we’ll talk to you soon.

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Join Jim Hill and Len Testa for a walking tour of Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom monorail resorts, from Bay Lake Tower and Disney’s Contemporary Resort to Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort and Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. Along the way, they talk resort design, Disney history, transportation, dining, construction rumors, and even an unexpected tour of the Grand One yacht.

Touring the Magic Kingdom Monorail Resorts – From Bay Lake Tower to the Grand Floridian Transcript

Len Testa: Hi, this is Len Testa. We’re back for another episode of the unofficial guide Disney Dish with Jim Hill. Today we’re at the Magic Kingdom Resorts. We’re going to be doing a walkthrough of all the resorts that are on the Magic Kingdom Monorail. We’re starting off at Bay Lake Tower. Jim, it is a wonderful sunny morning. Congratulations on being out of jail for at least three days now. That’s good. We love keeping the record going. The orange jumpsuit looks smashing on you, by the way. I didn’t picture you as an autumn, but yeah.

Jim Hill: You’re definitely in autumn. Well, you know, and it’s a 6X this time. It’s really nice.

Len Testa: Walk them around. It’s slowly but surely. The cuffs are a nice touch. It’s like bling. Tupac would be proud. Don’t walk quite so fast this time, OK?

Jim Hill: Shackles are all the rage these days.

Len Testa: So we’re over at Bay Lake Tower. We’re looking at Disney’s newest vacation club. That is until they get, well, there’s a lot in which they can’t yet sell, right?

Jim Hill: Speaking of legal problems…

Len Testa: Just a little problem with the fee. Paperwork? What? I thought you filed the paperwork. we’re at the Bay Lake Tower. It’s actually shining. You stayed here, right?

Jim Hill: No, actually, but I did that. In fact, I was with you here when you did the room

Len Testa: That’s right. did the room inspection. That day was opened. It’s actually a lovely resort. It’s one of the most quiet…

Jim Hill: set of rooms in in in waltz is not like it is the quietest set of rooms in waltz is your we’ve got we’ve ever tested it’s almost like sensory deprivation and you know the irony here is that we’re on the bay lake side so this literally in a way is sensory deprivation you did you looking out on this amazing view of you know basically traditional Florida. In fact, out on Raz Island, thing that Walt, in fact, that’s what closed the deal for that’s where we’re going to build in Orlando.

Len Testa: Yeah. So we’re especially facing the back of the Bay Lake tower right now. So you guys recall it’s a, it’s a C shaped structure. We’re actually looking into the open end of the sea. And then we’ve got Bay Lake behind us. It’s actually a beautiful day. There’s not a cloud in the sky. It’s sunny. It’s about 72 degrees. Got people out there parasailing.

Len Testa: at uh… get some voting going on but uh… to have the answer how was the resort a done for disney

Jim Hill: well i think the interesting thing about the lake towers is this is actually why Disney is as heavily in the social media. In fact, the Disney Parks blog exists because of this hotel. The Disney Parks blogs is… I actually got this from the head of communications at Walt Disney Imagineering. Basically, if you remember when they were building this and the whole what hotel? Hotel? What hotel? What? It’s a giant satellite dish. It got so embarrassing for the company because it was like all these websites were taking pictures of the non-steel rising up out of the non-ground. and don’t forget there was that thing with the architects who designed it publishing the Disney’s Bay Lake Tower plans and then taking it down the next day like it was the Pentagon Papers or something.

Len Testa: absolutely, absolutely.

Jim Hill: And finally it was just one of these things where it’s like look, all these websites are, you know, they’re eating our lunch, all right. We’re a company of storytellers. Why is it that we’re not telling our own stories? Why are we least not controlling the story?

Len Testa: No, absolutely. So this is, it was on the back of that, you know, that construction that Disney got as aggressive into. Well, at least the Disney Parks blog and then sort of jumped in with both feet to social media.

Jim Hill: That’s right, was about the time that the social media division was formed, the Moms panel idea which came up.

Len Testa: Yep. Can I piggyback on that? So the resort here, is it doing well?

Jim Hill: It’s doing reasonably well. I mean, you can’t go wrong with a monorail hotel, which is why, coincidentally, we’re now seeing the work begin on the DVC for the Grand Flo.

Len Testa: Wait, there’s a Grand Flo reading? DVC, Jim? Oh, wait a minute. I thought that they’re just making the spa 60 times larger.

Jim Hill: La la la la, I didn’t say that.

Len Testa: It’s funny because we’ve actually asked, so when you guys that are familiar with things going on over at the Grand Floridian, when they, when Disney came out with the announcement that they’re going to stop the monorail from running an hour after park close to the Magic Kingdom, we wrote in to the media relations and said well is this just so you could got you guys could do construction at night around the monorail pylons you know with it you know and get more get more working or you know is there is there something is this a permanent thing they wrote back and said we don’t know anything about construction at the grid flooring like do you need a picture of the bulldozers is that would that refresh your memory I can go get those in like 20 minutes I mean or if you guys drive by to work

Len Testa: so so what about what about restaurants here at the Bay Lake Tower are there any plans to expand the the restaurants or anything, that’s kind of the, if there’s one thing, so there’s two things I don’t like about Bay Lake Tower. One is lack of on-site dining, right, so no room service or anything like that. But then the other thing is there’s a slight walk to the bus stop. I could live with a walk to the bus stop. What about dining?

Jim Hill: Well, to be honest, what they’re looking at is, you know, it’s just one of these things where you have pre-existing facilities that they can temporarily. And more to the point, such a short walk to the kingdom.

Len Testa: You know, mean, there is method to the madness here. It’s just the whole… Yeah, we could bring you food in 30 minutes, or you could walk to the Magic Kingdom in 10.

Jim Hill: No, that’s exactly it. It’s sort of the… You know, I mean, it’s not necessarily bad guest service. It’s just sort of restricted guest service.

Len Testa: Yeah, that’s true. You know, and again, know, it is no coincidence we’re now standing under the walkway, which leads straight into the Contemporary. So it’s an interesting walkway. The thing I like about the walkway is it’s not straight. It’s curved.

Jim Hill: But the curve is interesting too because the building itself is curved. The contemporary, I don’t think there’s a single curve in the entire damn thing. It’s nothing but straight lines and angles.

Len Testa: Well, that’s the… And again… I love the contemporary, by the way.

Jim Hill: I’m fond of it myself, but again, from the very day they named it, in fact what was interesting is that for the longest time was actually called Tempo Bay. again, was literally they’re putting it together, it’s like, okay, what’s the temporary metal model or name for this thing? And it’s like, temporary. Temporary thing on the bay, Tempo Bay. And from there, was one of these things that stuck, and then it was like, oh wait a minute, it’s contemporary.

Len Testa: What’s weird if you actually saw the original model for the park, not only was this done in sleek modern style, the Polynesian was actually done in sleek modern style. actually, it looked like it was something on 1960s Wackakee. I mean, just, you know, sleek and stacked.

Jim Hill: and you know don’t do that joke when slinking stuff charo joke in the summer you know and and but again that was because it was walter beckett that’s because it was u.s. steel i mean you have to remember disney wasn’t running hotels at that point in fact

Len Testa: that’s right just up until eight months before the opening of the park Disney wasn’t going to even run these hotels. were going run the theme park. didn’t have any resort experience. So US Steel built them and was going to run them. US Steel was going to run the resorts.

Jim Hill: Yes.

Len Testa: Had US Steel run resorts prior to that?

Jim Hill: Not really, no. And in fact, the fact that they were the ones going, by the way, the hotels are supposed to open for October 1st, or think in April of the following year. And that was when Disney was, you know, this was unacceptable. They actually, you know, they met with them. They flew back, they called and said, how much to buy you out.

Len Testa: Really? you know, they gave… How far in advance of the opening was this?

Jim Hill: This is eight months. This is literally… And in fact, know, what kind of sealed the deal is Roy Disney made a very famous walkthrough while they’re building the thing. And it’s two o’clock in afternoon and it’s Florida. So it’s brutally hot. And he’s walking through this building of guys just sort of laying down and sitting because it’s too hot to work. And it was like, what? You know, we open when? And, you know, they went home and…

Len Testa: They’re taking a siesta.

Jim Hill: Yeah. And it was just like, This is nuts. You we have to this is our you know on our property. This is our hotel our name Yeah, we have to take control of the situation and But it was that’s part of the reason that Walt Disney World went from originally budgeted for a hundred million dollars to by opening four hundred million dollars you know, just an interesting time in the company’s history, you know, that this really had to hit or they were in trouble.

Len Testa: yeah, seriously. So let’s walk out, let’s take the walk from the Bay Lake Tower over to the contemporary. What’s going on at the contemporary these days? know they’ve recently in the last few years did the room refurbishment. They’ve gone through a whole new set of restaurants, right? So they’ve got the Wave, which had just had breakfast at it’s fabulous for breakfast, by the way. Don’t need reservations for breakfast or lunch. You can just walk in.

Jim Hill: the contempo cafe is new with the the ordering thing what but chef mickey’s is relatively the same right you don’t follow the character now well and then more to the point it get it that’s part of the problem with this hotel is that it’s all steeled it’s all concrete and it’s one of these things were like okay here’s this giant space people have eaten in four years and they you know they like The monorail goes by, people look out the window and are like, ooh, what is that? I want to go there.

Len Testa: It’s a good selling point, actually. So I filled a story in the podcast before, but as a kid coming in on the express monorail, going through the contemporary, it was a dream of mine to stay at the contemporary. And now I can do it any day I want.

Jim Hill: But you know, literally going through it, my first question was what kind of person do you have to be to stay at the Contemporary? It was always, it was captivating. was something that when I get older, dude, and when I have some money, I’m staying there.

Len Testa: No, absolutely.

Jim Hill: That was, and in fact, you think about it, from the wonderful world of Disney, the shot of the monorail going into the hotel, how they changed out the opening of that show in 71, 72 to reflect all these new Disney-related experiences.

Len Testa: So many kids like, I want to go there, I want to do that. Including me, so apparently work. So we’re outside the back of the Contemporary right now. We see sort of off to the straight ahead of us what’s left of the garden wings of the Contemporary, which is interesting now that it’s not Bay Lake Tower. We’ve got Bay Lake Tower to our left. We’re now looking at over the marina and in the distance, Jim, I see Discovery Island.

Jim Hill: Yep. Ah, Discovery Island. Did you bring your scuba? Because we could do a whole other podcast from over there.

Len Testa: What is it, the Urban Commandos that actually did that?

Jim Hill: I know, I know. It’s like the three o’clock swim over from Fort Wilbeth.

Len Testa: The 3 a.m. swim. mean, know, yeah, three o’clock in the morning. I did not bring my water wings with me. I’m just curious about alligators in the water. don’t know if… Don’t alligators feed at night? mean, they probably didn’t think of it. That would probably be the only thing I was thinking of.

Jim Hill: But even then, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the photographs, but when they actually got over there, was clear that when they came off the island, they thought they were going back. So they were, you know, mean, the…

Len Testa: So when Disney left the island, Disney thought, we’ll just be back in six months or something.

Jim Hill: Yeah, it’s so much, you know, between the schedules that are tacked up on the wall and the food that was still in the refrigerator.

Len Testa: Jim, you’re working Tuesday.

Jim Hill: Yeah, I was like, I’ll meet you at the island. But yeah, this is… And there were no less than three different concepts that they toyed with for using this real estate. There was the lost interactive experience lost you know the other division right they actually had protracted conversations and they moved very heavily through a development of a mist themed

Len Testa: that’s right I heard that was like on and off and on and off and on and off

Jim Hill: and I think in the end it and this is weird to say this you know had given the deal that Disney just made with James Cameron for avatar but it ultimately came down to why are we paying for somebody else’s intellectual property. Can’t we come up with something of our own?

Len Testa: The girl days. Yeah. When they can still think like that with a serious face.

Jim Hill: And the last version was a set of 12 honeymoon cottages.

Len Testa: yeah. But then it becomes a question of, so you have to have a boat. Boat on call. 24-7. You have to build some sort of support facilities out there. And it’s just sort of like.

Jim Hill: It’s now kind of a blank spot on the real estate because it was like, alright, that kind of makes sense, you know, the way Disney works is like, okay. What we make off of that? Show me what we projected to make over 10 years. Now show me what we’d have to spend up front. And if it doesn’t deliver, if the return on investment isn’t significant enough, it’s like, we’ll circle around to it. We’ll find an idea.

Len Testa: What is their goal? to break even within a year or 18 months or something?

Jim Hill: And to be well, well into profit by five years. And that if you can’t be showing that you’re broken even by year three, they’re not even going to consider it.

Len Testa: So Discovery Island is just kind sitting there right now.

Jim Hill: Yeah, and likewise, you know, you think about Fort Wilderness and River Country and in fact the other DVC that’s not supposed to be built.

Len Testa: Oh, they’re not supposed to be building, yeah, heard that too though. heard that from a couple of different places.

Jim Hill: Yeah, it’s just kind of interesting to me to watch them try to figure out new places to drop these things.

Len Testa: And so the reason why we’re doing this, I think we talked about this on a previous show, but the reason why Disney keeps building DVC is DVC revenue counts as theme park revenue for Disney. So they’ve become addicted to it every, every, every year. Their, their theme park revenue bottom line is padded by DVC sales. So DVC sales. So if they ever stopped doing that, there’d be a huge drop in theme park revenue that have to explain. you have to keep those plates spinning. But at some point, Jim, they’re going to run it.

Jim Hill: Well, that’s why think that’s why they’re doing a lot of right. It’s it’s let’s let’s think about something other than Orlando. So far that’s going so well. Again with the paperwork thing.

Len Testa: Alright, so let’s walk back to the contemporary, maybe we’ll do a walk through the lobby, see what’s going on over there.

Len Testa: It’s still a lovely day there, really.

Jim Hill: No, absolutely. But just one other little thing. You have to understand that before they flashed on the idea, they were going to have to raise up the entire site because of the little water tank.

Len Testa: that’s right. So when they were building Disney, the idea was that they had to truck in. Is who are the blowfish playing like a wedding or something? They sound like they’re really close.

Jim Hill: That’s probably the only thing they’re doing these days. No, but anyway, so yeah, so they had to truck in tons and tons of dirt to build up the land because essentially it was swamp back in the 70s.

Len Testa: That’s exactly it. But the original plan was Bay Lake was going to be the body of water. And in fact, where we are now would have been…

Jim Hill: in the contemporary. Would have been… There’d been three different themed villages back here. There would have been a Cape Cod themed village. There would have been a Tahitian themed village. And actually, know, following through on what had been built or what they were planning to build, the Persian resort.

Len Testa: But three little coves, each of them. Really? Around the same… So they ended up with three resorts, just not in the way that it was originally envisioned.

Jim Hill: That was always sort of the… That’s what we think we’re gonna need. We think we’re gonna need three. They’re 27. Well, can stop any time now. What was the thing about capacity issues?

Len Testa: So we’re walking into the lobby. I like the lobby. It’s interesting though that the lobby’s on the first floor and all of the main things, all the restaurants are on the fourth floor.

Jim Hill: Except for The Wave, which is first one. But again, you’re married to kind of the 1970s thought about how you do a reserve. I mean, for example, we’ve just gotten on the escalator and notice how tight the escalator is. The escalators were definitely built for a thinner people like Twiggy. And again, when you consider the ever-expanding American ass, it’s just sort of like, you know…

Jim Hill: This has always been one of those issues with this hotel with the steel and the concrete it’s like we should really do something about that. We should really relocate the steel and the concrete. What are we gonna do? Are we really going to spend the money?

Len Testa: We have to go up one more floor, right? So we’re on the sort of the second floor of the Convention Center stuff right now. Looks like they’re doing a little bit of work. Oh the columns are blue now.

Jim Hill: but you also know the significant place to… the contemporary occupies in American political history, right?

Len Testa: American, I know that, no, the only thing I knew about that was that the Beatles broke up here, There is Or at the poly.

Jim Hill: Alright, but this is actually where Nixon did the famous I am not a crook speech.

Len Testa: No, this was here? Seriously.

Jim Hill: Alright, he was looking for a friendly audience at that point in his presidency and it came out for, you know, Republicans in the state of Florida and, you know, just the Q &A and it’s like, well, you know, that would mean I’m a crook. I am not a crook. It’s right here, right here.

Len Testa: Wow, so we’re at the fourth floor now. We’re on the main floor of the Contemporary. We’ve got the… Oh, we’ve actually got monorails going back and forth. in the Grand Canyon Concourse. Now, it’s an amazing area space. I this is the one area where the design really does pay off.

Jim Hill: Yeah, I mean, here you can sort of see the full effect of the triangular architecture. You’ve got a huge open space. It’s bisected by walkways to either end of the floor but overall it really works. And then you factor in that you’ve got the charming Mary Blair tile work. It’s very early on that helped make this more of a huggy space because that’s the other thing that…

Len Testa: It’s sterile. The thing is sterile.

Jim Hill: Without the mural actually be… You know, just, you know, and this is sterile in like Logan’s run 1973 kind of way. It’s like, I’m sorry, that little crystal is glowing in my hand. I have to die now. But first, a snack.

Len Testa: So this is Contempo Cafe. This is sort of their trial at Automating Food Service where you don’t have waitstaff. So you get to see the tables, but you order from touchscreens, you pick it up at a central place, you pay for it, and then you go sit.

Jim Hill: it’s… What the test drove at Captain Cook’s over at Polly?

Len Testa: So Captain Cook’s came after this. This was, think, one of the first… Or maybe they were doing it at Pecos Bills?

Jim Hill: there I think it was Pecos Bills, Contempo Cafe.

Len Testa: Got it. Okay. Yeah, but it’s interesting. The food is actually cooked to order, which isn’t bad. So it’s not heat lampy, which you wouldn’t expect at a deluxe resort anyway.

Jim Hill: And it’s just a little odd because of the way that you touch screen, pick up food, pick up drinks and then pay. You would think that it would be order, pay, pick up, but it’s all the same. The interesting thing is they do survey people who stay at this hotel and one of the issues, oddly enough, people love the Monorail except that it’s slow. And that coupled with the Monorail station up here is again because we’re talking about the 1970s when people were thin, you know, it’s just, it’s a very tight small space, whether it’s the queue or the station or that sort of thing. And people really just sort of kind of feel like, know, so, but it’s one of these things where they acknowledge it. Look, we get this survey answer all the time, but it’s like, it means in order to fix this, shutting down the monorail. for roughly 18 months.

Len Testa: it’s not like you’re gonna reroute the monorail. not like you switch tracks. There’s only one way to go. They could simply reroute TTC to Grand Floridian and then back again. But then there wouldn’t be an express monorail. Then it’d just be ferries.

Jim Hill: No, absolutely. Absolutely. And face it, people pay a premium to stay here because it is a monorail.

Len Testa: Oh, I see what you’re saying. Yeah, so yeah, the contemporary would be walking distance, but it’s a 10 minute walk. And then, and how would you get people to Epcot? It’d be buses.

Len Testa: Yeah, and it’s and and we’re already dealing with the situation now or tech I was coming over today You know 10 30 in the morning see a bus as an employees getting there on two-lane roads across to see property You know it just it’s one way each way

Jim Hill: Yeah, it’s just it’s an infrastructure that worked really really well with one theme park three hotels 30 years ago. Yeah, and now you know we’re at this point where they’ve maxed out the system and it’s just sort of like they have to bite the bullet at some point.

Len Testa: And build more infrastructure.

Jim Hill: But then if you build infrastructure, then you’ve got long-term maintenance, you’ve got ongoing capital stuff.

Len Testa: go. So we’re going to take a walk out to the viewing area for Magic Kingdom fireworks. We’re going to go out on the veranda, the patio. This is actually a great view, so to our right is Bay Lake Tower. Jim, what’s that fountain in front of us, straight ahead? monorail passing overhead, it’s monorail burgundy? Purple? What’s the giant fountain that looks like Old Faithful

Jim Hill: over actually just found out about this, because again, anybody who’s coming to the property will go, what’s that? And it turns out that it looks like a fountain, what it is, is it’s aerating the pond. so algae doesn’t grow.

Len Testa: That’s huge. mean that spout is over the treetops.

Jim Hill: That’s it exactly. And in fact, they’ve actually gotten, they’ve had an issue with people pulling into contemporary security and asking about it. Wait, can I have the water spout view? And it’s like, no, we’re just aerating the pond. really sorry. It’s like, it is attractive, but at the same way, it’s become something of a curiosity factor. there are just about can we lower the height of this so it’s not…

Len Testa: mean really so it’s above the tree line and we’re standing on the fourth floor. it’s depending on how the wind is blowing and guess minute to minute or second to second water pressure it’s actually it’s pretty darn I would say it’s what it’s at least one one two three four five six it’s at least six maybe seven stories high that’s about as high as you can get water I mean it’s as high as you can pump water

Jim Hill: It’s not old faithful, it’s old frothful.

Len Testa: Okay, just trying to keep the… So we’re looking, let’s go look at the Magic Kingdom here. So we’ve got a set of about 12 seats here. Overlooking the Magic Kingdom we’ve got… Oh, here comes another monorail. We’ve got Space Mountain in the distance. I can see two monorails queued up to go into the Magic Kingdom. And then, again, perfectly blue sky day, not a cloud in sight.

Len Testa: The only thing that we can see now, two construction cranes and Jim is that a new AT &T cell phone tower in the distance there?

Jim Hill: I think it is, isn’t it? Why yes, why yes.

Len Testa: So actually I heard from the Orlando Sentinel that AT has installed a new cell phone tower on Disney property just for capacity during Christmas. I think that’s actually the tower right there. if you guys are looking at it from the contemporary, it’s almost equidistant between Cinderella Castle and Space Mountain, literally right in the middle. It looks like a construction crane from here, but it’s not really a construction crane. Although there are, at this moment, fantasy land construction cranes on either side. How much of that do you think will double back into next gen? They’re obviously…

Jim Hill: Good point. I thought it was just because I was complaining about it. No. I mean, if they’re gonna need that level of cell service just for Christmas, imagine what’s gonna happen when Next Gen comes in.

Len Testa: So real quick, what’s Next Gen, Jim?

Jim Hill: Next Gen is… You got a minute and a half. I have a glorious three hour presentation of this. You got a minute and a There we go. Oh, all right. The notion of Next Gen literally is you basically can carry your theme park experience in your hand, whether it’s your fast passes or the notion of being on board an attraction and having the AA figure turn and talk to your daughter. In fact, we were talking about this the other day, the problem with next gen is it’s hundreds of little things that will add up ultimately to sort of the ultimate personal Disney theme park and resort experience. And the irony is it’s all built on the back of technology.

Len Testa: Yeah, it’s interesting. So it’s not story, it’s not attractions, it’s technology.

Jim Hill: No, but it’s all these little, little things. But again, at the same time you’re to need so much bandwidth and such to drive all of these little personal experiences. I wouldn’t be surprised if we come back here in a year and see a companion for the tower, if not two, just so they can triangulate. come lightning strike time, woo.

Len Testa: That’s right, yeah, so now they’re essentially at a single point of no. Actually, it was interesting, I was here during December and I literally could not get a signal. You can almost tell what the crowd size was in the Magic Kingdom by how badly your cell phone was functioning. like from 6 a.m. to like 8 a.m., everything was fine. About eight to nine, really, know, call quality diminished. It was kind of tough to surf the web. By like 9 o’clock, literally, couldn’t get anything. Couldn’t make a call, couldn’t get text, couldn’t surf the web or anything. Then about 11 o’clock at night, get this flurry of text messages like, hey, I’m in the Magic Kingdom, it’s 10 a.m., where are you? You know, 12 hours later. And you get to, all of a sudden you have 16 missed calls, 26 text messages, and oh, by the way, the web works again.

Len Testa: Speaking of cell phones though, I actually on Saturday got into Tiki.

Jim Hill: Oh yeah, the revised 1971.

Len Testa: It was so funny to watch. was like literally you had an attentive audience for like 45 seconds and then the first cell phone came up and then the next cell phone came out. And I stopped counting at 15.

Jim Hill: 45 seconds. You’re not even through opening number. No, but it was like, right, I’m sitting down. Okay, birds singing. Got it. What’s next?

Len Testa: I think that’s what amuses the hell out of me, the whole notion of, you know, we’re gonna bring this back for nostalgia factor and it’s like, nostalgia lasts 45 seconds. Isn’t that great? It’s a great idea. What’s going on in USA Today?

Jim Hill: There you go. There you go. Should we walk to the monorail?

Len Testa: Sure. Let’s see what’s going on in the monorail. This is a lovely space. They should rent it out. They should charge money for this.

Len Testa: So Jim and I are walking past the detris of last night’s fireworks viewing. there were some, you know, there’s a long, like foot long things filled with sugar, the candy sticks. There were a bunch of those in various colors scattered below the seat. So it looks like one family was probably up all night.

Jim Hill: that. children in diabetic comas, one or

Len Testa: And one of the other kids passed out this morning. Just need, just need some pixie dust. And we’re walking back in. It’s still lovely day, I really can’t get over it. It was gonna be hot all week and then it’s cool done. It’s beautiful time to be in Walt Disney World right now. So we’re walking back through the Grand Canyon Concourse, walking past the Fantasia shop. The thing that I don’t like about the Fantasia shop, round Mickey ears in an otherwise angular building. Doesn’t go. If this had been pointy, if this had been like a pointy thing where you could stick an eye out with it, it would have been perfect design.

Jim Hill: Right? But it doesn’t go. You don’t to run at high speeds at the gift shop, kid. It’s not dangerous enough. That’s what I don’t like about it. It’s not dangerous enough. Well, but at the same time, mean, you know, the new design, you know, to fit into this, this angular space to try to turn this into a retop.

Len Testa: that’s right. Yeah. So, so the reason the ears are there is because they couldn’t put anything low because it would screw up the walking. Okay. I kind of get it. Still not an excuse.

Jim Hill: No, no, I agree. I agree. But I don’t know. It just, this is… They’re going to have to address issues with this hotel. I mean, it’s coming. We are still years away. But it’s interesting. Keying off of the fact that we’re here for the 40th and Disney is already making plans for the 50th, the big deal redo of this, in fact, queuing into the rumor that we talked about earlier about the poly. This between here and 2021, they’re doing a massive redo.

Len Testa: Because this will obviously, you know… Of the resort? Of the contemporary?

Jim Hill: They have to. Because, think about it, before the 50th, you know, the pressure is actually going to be on, I want to be in the hotel, they stay again. know, for the opening. 50 years ago? Yeah. But at the same time, you just, you have to address how many people… Think about it. How few people in electric cars can use this space?

Len Testa: Yeah, electric carts. the trouble with electric carts would be you’d have to take the escalator, even then the Russia on the fourth floor right now or sorry fifth floor were navigating the the metal guide rails that get you to the monorail, but yeah, they’re pretty tight actually I don’t know that you would get a I don’t know that you’d get a An electric vehicle through this you’d come up you’d come up through the escalator, but it’d be tricky. Oh somebody did it

Jim Hill: But if you talk with the people at Ops, for example… I was talking with a friend who works at Taunted Mansion and it’s like, you know, they’ve now made the queue there.

Len Testa: That’s right, there’s a little side detour that you can use for ECVs.

Jim Hill: But it means when you put an ECV in the stretching room, that vehicle takes up the space of eight people.

Len Testa: because everyone has their personal space around it.

Jim Hill: Exactly. Yeah, so it’s not just the space of the ECV, it’s that no one gets within six inches of it so they don’t get run over. And so you multiply that by how many ECVs you actually see on property these days. It’s getting kind of interesting. They like the money and they want to be fair to all guests. between what you have to do to queues, what you have to do to make shows accessible, the bus system.

Len Testa: Yeah, it’s a lot of stuff. Over over over. and we have our own monorail queue. This thing is interesting. Ooh.

Len Testa: Alright, so we’re headed over to the TGC. Any last words on the contemporary, Jim?

Jim Hill: It will continue to be what it is. It’s going to try to be the most modern hotel and property. As Tomorrowland proves, that’s a hard thing to do. One of the things I heard for NextGen is that, is it contemporary or Bay Lake Tower will be the ultimate or the highest level of NextGen amenities that you can get. So the idea behind NextGen is that if you stay at a value resort, you’ll get a few amenities. amenities. If you’re at a moderate resort, you’ll get a few more amenities. If you’re at a deluxe resort, you’ll get almost all the amenities. But then there’s this idea that they’re going to pick one hotel and that if you stay at that hotel, you get every single thing that NextGen could offer. Which hotel is it? Well, again, it’s interesting you bring that up because that hotel, he who cannot be named over by the polly, or excuse me, the flow.

Len Testa: You know, the whole notion is to pull that off is a certain level of wiring, certain level of, know, Wi-Fi has to be built into every room and, you know, the notion is do we do that for Bay Lake? Do we go in and have to retrofit change of technology or right from the get-go we do this with the flow? so you do go back and pay the money to retrofit an existing building or as you’re building the Grand Floridian DBC from the ground You can use that building as your beta, you know.

Jim Hill: right, right, right. So that’s what I’ve heard, but again, I do know that there is a certain tug of war going on between Bay Lake and, again, DEC.

Len Testa: You know what they need to do? They need to put small Spanish ships in 17th legion and just let them fight it out like we did in the 17th century.

Jim Hill: That’s right. The Polynesian will be dug out, canoes coming out to fight. That won’t last long, but you know.

Len Testa: Yeah, so we’re actually passing now the Wilderness Lodge on our left. up on the skyway in the sky. Or the highway in the sky, sorry. And we’re pulling into the TTC. You can sort of see the poly in the distance.

Len Testa: Alright, Jim, so we’re pulling into the Polynesian… By the way, this is my favorite Walt Disney World Resort right here, the Polynesian. I love the ambiance, I love the landscaping, it’s beautiful. It’s actually one of the smallest resorts too, right?

Jim Hill: It is, it is.

Len Testa: So it’s my sentimental favorite. God forbid, Jim, God forbid, anything should ever happen to this resort.

Jim Hill: Why do you say that, Jim? Well, just this morning… are some rumors making the rounds in regard to the future of this resort, in particular what may happen. This may be shut for quite a while to repair some pretty scary issues.

Len Testa: Some, structural issues?

Jim Hill: If the rumors are true, we’re talking things like sinkholes. And, you know, mean, this, this, you know, the interesting thing is that it wasn’t all that long ago. They redid a lot of the longhouses here for, you know, mold issues and, you know, it’s just an older hotel type thing.

Len Testa: I’d heard some of the, some of the stuff that they did in the reef for back, what, like 2005, 2007 was actually propping up sides of the buildings that had begun to, to crumble. So, so like the ground giving way, by the way, we’re, we just came off the monorail. We’re now on the second floor of the Polynesian to our right is the new Kona Sushi Place. By the way, have you tried the sushi over here?

Jim Hill: No.

Len Testa: It’s fantastic. So apparently they pulled chefs from California Grill to staff this. So it’s actual sushi people, not people that, you know, were serving at Ohana and then coming over here and learning how to slice and dice rice. We’ve got Ohana, sorry, we’ve got Kona to our left. We’ve got Ohana in the far back and we’ve got retail spaces to our right.

Len Testa: But you know what else I like? I like the smell of the poly.

Jim Hill: No, it has always had a distinct sound, distinct feel. In fact, you know, it’s interesting that this is your favorite because this is, according to Disney’s own internal service and such, this is the hotel that when people have stayed here before, they’re most likely to request, you know, that they want to go back. They love the feel of it. They love the convenience of it. You know, in fact, just the other night I was over here and it was and was watching the Halloween fireworks from here.

Len Testa: Oh yeah, it’s a great view of the fireworks from here.

Jim Hill: Absolutely, and it was fascinating to watch literally the hundreds of people who had come out to do just the same thing. Whether they were sitting up on the little hillside where they built sort of the wedding platform or you know turning their chairs away from the screening of Tangled they were having.

Len Testa: Oh, they were doing on the beach?

Jim Hill: Yeah, there, they all screening.

Len Testa: I like that idea actually, it’s good for kids. we’re standing over right now, the waterfall in the middle of the lobby. We’re looking down, there’s a small circular not small, it’s actually huge. It takes up the entire center of the resort. But it’s a multi-level waterfall with a ring of water around it. It’s quite, see it’s not obtrusive, right? It’s just the right amount of background noise. We’ve got green plants that literally go from the first floor all the way up to the, almost to the ceiling. So we’ve got these palm trees on the side. We’ve got an open, clear roof again. It’s perfectly sunny day. You see the arches for the, main building, I guess the canopy that’s holding the ceiling up is above us. It’s actually not that crowded here right now, but it’s still a pretty dynamic place. So you’ve got smell, you’ve got sight, you’ve got sound. If someone was giving us pineapple drinks, we would have taste.

Jim Hill: There we go.

Len Testa: Let’s take a walk around, Jim. Let’s go out. You want to go restaurants or retail?

Jim Hill: Let’s start restaurants. In fact, we could wander over to Ohana.

Len Testa: So Hana is the family style, all you can eat meat, meat man, you’re right, sausage, pork. Pretty much if it’s got hooves, it’s on a skewer somewhere, plus shrimp.

Jim Hill: But at the same time, this is a ridiculously popular concept that, you know, they… In fact, it’s been interesting to watch how the lobby, which standing here in the lobby that is bumped out to be the waiting area for yeah, so this is new. So it used to be the one corner of the resort was dedicated to the Ohana waiting area. But now it’s essentially taken up one entire short side of the resort. They’ve moved the check-in desk all the way out so literally one that’s what one quarter of the one quarter of the square lobby is now dedicated to Ohana waiting and Ohana itself. you know the the interesting thing is again that this used to be a wonderful space on the second floor and and it’s still got chairs that guests can sit in and and you know during this time of day when there isn’t so much demand but this kind of doubles back on what we were talking about over at Tomorrowland where they have the terrace areas that sit empty for nine, 10 months out of the year that are then used for seasonal dining. And they make up enough money on the seasonal dining to let it stay closed.

Len Testa: So this is interesting in the way they’ve got the seats set up. they’ve got seats going all along one wall and then an open space of about, I would say, five or six yards, maybe 10 feet, maybe 15 feet. and then another row of chairs. It’s almost like the adults sit on the side and the kids run around in the middle.

Jim Hill: That’s pretty much it, know, just carameling between the parents. again, the two to three hours when Ohana is doing maximum business, they need this. The rest of the day…

Len Testa: So breakfast and dinner, right?

Jim Hill: you go. The two hours are on breakfast, the two hours are on dinner.

Len Testa: We’ll take a walk around. Anything new going on with Ohana?

Jim Hill: You know, it’s… know, in fact, when we were over at Animal Kingdom taking our survey on the way out, know, the Ohana is kind of staring down the gun. of every Disney restaurant right now where there is an initiative from on high about we need healthier food.

Len Testa: really? So hold on, so you’re saying that the pork, sausage, filet, and shrimp skewers are not…

Jim Hill: You know, with the complimentary bypass.

Len Testa: So wait, so Jim, if I understand correctly, each of those animals eat vegetables. And if you eat the animal, aren’t you getting all of the vegetable goodness?

Jim Hill: I think you actually have to eat a full vegetarian to get the…

Len Testa: Oh, one entire vegetarian. One entire vegetarian. That’s what does… Okay, I’m a little mistaken then. got to do poofs and everything. So we’re looking at Kona now, actually. Kona, like I said, Kona’s pretty interesting. They’ve got the new sushi place, which is fabulous. People should go to it. It’s very one-on-one service. Kona itself, actually, not very crowded, but it’s lunchtime right now and it’s an easy reservation to get.

Jim Hill: No, absolutely. But again, it’s just fascinating to watch. Again, go… 40 year old facility that they continue to tinker with whether it’s you know bumping out waiting areas or you know can we mix up the menu over here?

Len Testa: Have you tried the Eggs Benedict over here Kona? Okay I came here I was a little bit on the way to the airport. Everyone thinks Tonga Toast I’m telling you Eggs Benedict it’s got a pork hash pork hash with it best thing on the menu I don’t even like Eggs Benedict it was fabulous.

Jim Hill: No just literally came here to visit a friend on the way to the airport it was just like could not stop eating the Eggs Benedict.

Len Testa: Okay, well, I’m glad I made the trip. But yeah, it’s it’s, it’s, but the other thing I find fascinating is all of this straight off the monorail.

Jim Hill: Yeah. You know, I mean, just literally capture them as they get back.

Len Testa: Yeah, so this is, this is a great, lobby for either coming from the monorail or from or just getting it off of your car. Would you say that most people make the entrance, most people come into the poly from the first floor or from the second floor?

Jim Hill: Well, traditionally they come in from the first floor, but again, you know, when they’re tired and you know, that’s when they’ve got them off of the monorail, which is again, gift shop, you know, our little retail space here where it’s getting drinks or snacks or.

Len Testa: so you come back, you’re a little bit thirsty. It’s great design.

Jim Hill: It’s you know and again I know that they’re you know theme park fans will ding is the over and over again about getting The minor touches wrong or get the big things but something like this where it’s 40 years of finessing the design You know, that’s that’s brilliant up there.

Len Testa: yeah, it’s still it’s a hugely it’s lasted 40 years I mean, okay, so you get one or two complaints from the kids in the background, but whatever And but at the same time look we want to go to lobby and oh look a DVC sales point. So. Oh, it’s running and apparently the screen saver is running Windows XP Professional. By the way, Disney, you’re listening to this, that’s going out of support very, very soon. You definitely want to upgrade to Windows 7. All right, so let’s walk out to Lua Cove. So the big thing around Lua Cove is the redo of Captain Cook’s. How’s that worked out for them?

Jim Hill: I was in there literally a couple of nights ago and frankly. People like to be able to order their own food. They like, you know, it being freshly made. But the cash wrap, you know, is just, it does, it’s obtrusive.

Len Testa: The cash grab you say?

Jim Hill: The cash wrap, place we actually go to, you know, to pay.

Len Testa: Oh, the cashiers. Okay. It’s it’s kind of counterintuitive, the layout. It is. Cause you, cause you kind of go to the right to get your food, back to get your food. Then you’ve got to come back to the front to pay. Then you go up into the left to sit. is counter-artut. Up and to the left.

Len Testa: So we’re coming up on the volcano pool right now. So we’re actually looking out straight out towards the Magic Kingdom. Cinderella Castle is directly in front of us. We’ve got the main poly pool in front of us. In front of that we’ve got the giant volcano to our left. We’ve got the longhouse to our right. right in front of us. See if you can see the island there.

Jim Hill: can everything. Depending on the time of year and the growth, you can sometimes see the pieces of the wave machine. So the wave machine, the wave machine. This this was actually an opening day feature for this resort. A wave machine out in the middle of Bay Lake. Seriously, the stars seven seas lagoon, the exact same sort of machine that’s used at Typhoon Lagoon to make the artificial wave. is out there on the island.

Len Testa: Really?

Jim Hill: It ran for six months. And in fact, there’s this great shot of Dick Nunes, who was again, a huge surfing enthusiast.

Len Testa: I was going to say, he surfing?

Jim Hill: Yes, mean, literally. And it was such a wonderful, I mean, it was literally this authentic island experiences. The surf crashed in. But sadly, nobody at Disney had thought, well, when the wave goes out, what happens?

Len Testa: No one thought, oh, erosion.

Jim Hill: Yes, that’s exactly it. The beach went away. And it was like, all this beautiful white sand that they’d hauled up and rigged. it was like, and it was. And now it’s at the bottom of seven seas.

Len Testa: Well, you know, but it’s just it was literally one of these situations where it’s like, we love it. We know it works.

Jim Hill: But we just had not taken into consideration how it would do in an open body of water, which is when they revisited it, when they revisited the idea and built Taikun Lagoon, I mean it’s… cement bottom pool. You know, there is the little sand feature.

Len Testa: Right. But see, literally you can see, Oh yeah, you can totally see where the water would come out right there. There’s a, there’s a little inlet in the island. It’s a, it’s totally obvious. That whole piece right there. And it’s just literally a dump tank and it was just, and the wave would roll in this direction. So now we’re actually behind the Hawaii building at, at the Poly. Now we have an unobstructed view. We’re almost, if we stepped one foot forward, we’d be on the white beach sand. of the Polly in our immediately chair left you can see the Grand Floridian you can see the the spa the wedding pavilion there are a couple of a couple of small resort launches boats running back and forth again perfectly oh you got the ferry in the distance you guys can hear the ferry horn

Len Testa: Not crowded at all, but boy, is, the monitor is running. Jim, this should be a panoramic photo right here. This is beautiful.

Jim Hill: Absolutely, absolutely. But the interesting thing, standing here at this point, we actually have, we can see the contemporary, we can see the, but we can also see, you know, just. the other three hotels that were supposed to be built for opening day. mean, for example, we look across the way, this is the Grand Flo, but that is also, was originally the site of the tie.

Len Testa: know, that the- Yeah, the Persian resort?

Jim Hill: Well, no, Persia was actually going to be-

Len Testa: Oh, they’re going to do lots of- So they’re going to do- Oh, okay, Persian tie. Okay, cool.

Jim Hill: So that they, in effect, they tie in with the issues that the poly is supposed to have with, you know, in regard to sinkholes and that sort of thing. Right next to where the- Between the contemporary and the TTC, there is a piece of property that at one point was supposed to be the Venetian Resort, which ironically, know, again, they’ve got one those in Vegas. There you go. How about that?

Len Testa: Actually, it’s lovely to be in.

Jim Hill: Yes. Yes. But again, it’s a sinking city, which again, which was perfect about this spot because they kept putting in, you know, the pilings, the test pilings to see what the site could hold and they would just sink out of sight. But it was such a sort of accuracy in architecture that they didn’t want. So, you know, all right, they abandoned that idea. And but it’s such a primo piece of real estate that the Imagineers return later to the same piece of property. And they propose doing a Grecian. And the idea is, OK, we’ll do lower buildings further out and we’ll sort of put, you know, a dock area and same thing. They would just put in construction pylons, go to hammer them in. And they just there is no bottom over there. Wow. This is all, you know, just. Again, this was all swampland. And they built it up, But you know, the Persian would have been between basically out, in fact, very close to where the boat dock area for the sort of the harbor where everything is taken back to be worked on, that sort of thing was constructed. But it would have sort of loomed up over the horizon at Phanus Island. In fact, long range. That kind of sort of would have fit in.

Len Testa: That would have been terrible.

Jim Hill: but you it and again would have been kind of a hard sell as the oil crisis begins and they know exactly the person you know, it’s a sort of hostage crisis but Come stay at the hotel. Well, we promise you can leave but all beautiful blue minarets and you know, I mean it really was a fantasy building

Len Testa: Nice. So we’re walking. I’m still walking back behind the the Hawaii building. This is the concierge the club level building Wonderful rooms actually. you get some of the patio floors here, these are wonderful to watch the fireworks. In fact, the best Disney vacation I’ve ever had where I didn’t have to work, and those are few and far between, one of best ones I’ve ever had was Tiki Fest, Steve Seifert’s Tiki Fest. Back in 2007, we got a room at the club level here at Hawaii, and it literally did nothing but sit and relax and talk to Steve for like two whole days. Steve’s family. You know, just met people from Diggie. So this was funny. I brought Hannah. So it was just, it was the first father daughter trip that we’d ever taken. So we were staying in one of these buildings, one of these rooms right here in the middle of Hawaii. And do see that in front of the building, there’s that little hammock right there. Hannah fell asleep in the hammock because it was a day like this. It was, it was nice. It was cool. You know, sun out, not crowded at all. The thing that, the thing that was interesting was a rainstorm had come in. it got to, cooled off a lot and then the rain started to fall. Hannah was still asleep in the hammock.

Len Testa: There’s lightning crashing, there’s hail coming down, there’s pelting rain. I was like, Hannah, Hannah wake up. Hannah, you gotta get inside. Finally I had to pick her up in carriers. She’s like, something wrong? Why am I wet? She was out. She was out. I only had to walk the 30 yards, but this is really relaxing. The other interesting thing about this first floor here at the Pauley is because the walls aren’t that big between rooms, you actually get to know your neighbors. It’s not like a…

Len Testa: You know, at the other Disney Resorts, you’re essentially, you’re walled off. in your little cell and that’s it. There’s no conversation between the two rooms. Here it’s actually much more open and you’ve got this huge green lush lawn in front of you. can let the kids take their shoes off and run around directly in front of you and you’re sitting in the shade. They’re running around having a good time. You’re hopefully sitting on a lawn chair, sipping on Mai Tai or something and just watching everything go on. There’s plenty of activity to look at. mean, there’s boats passing by, there’s monorails passing by. the parasailing, occasional guy riding in the sky, you know. And you’ve got the Magic Kingdom up in distance. It couldn’t be prettier.

Jim Hill: No, absolutely. This is, know, is sort of a… Again, this is why people come back here. They have…

Len Testa: favorite resort, man.

Jim Hill: They do… This is the quintessential, you know, Disney theme park experience.

Len Testa: But think about it. I this is a much more intimate feel. I mean, look at it. You can’t… If you turn around, right, you can’t see more than 20 or 30 yards in the distance, but there are walkways there that you can see, right? So look, so now we’re turned around. The Hawaii building is on our right. Magic Kingdom is on our left. We’re looking at, Steve Seifert would kill me, but one of the long houses right next to Hawaii. There’s a little path that goes off to our left, but it’s just that you can’t see exactly where it’s going because there’s some lush green plants. You’ve got some palm trees in the distance that kind of tell you, yeah, it goes a little bit to the left, but we don’t really know where it goes beyond that. Why don’t you come take a look? And then there’s another walkway over here to the right. We’ll take the one to the right.

Len Testa: So you walk up to the right and then there’s another walkway and it goes somewhere towards the interior of the resort. But here’s the irony. This is the exact same construction technique for this hotel was the one that was used for the contemporary. This is the modular rooms built slotted, know, literally over here with a crane, slotted in. So it was a shell, like an erector set, that they slid rooms into. Now mind you, that was only for the original sets of hotels. By the time they began expanding.

Jim Hill: the buildings have settled right Nate? So the idea right, the idea was that as the rooms needed refurbishment you would just pull the room out almost like a semi trailer and then you would refurbish it and then you’d slide it back in. then the building started to settle, things became not square. And more to the point, know, the people, Disney had had the falling out with the people who actually had… created this construction technique, US Steel. So any of the new wings, the newer buildings, were all done traditionally. They all done in the traditional construction style.

Len Testa: That’s a shame. Conceptually, the idea was brilliant. You need to refurbish a room. You take out the old room. You put in something temporary so you don’t lose the room. right and then when the new room comes back you’re

Jim Hill: Brilliant. absolutely but at the same time it’s just that you know the weird thing of it is is our idea of Convenient and future. You know, I mean again, this is this is what Wow, this is groundbreaking for 71 now You know the whole notion of somebody is like wait a minute My hotel room is the exact same as every other hotel room in here. Yeah, you know, it’s like no I want special. I mean, that’s the age we live in now It’s it’s customization. That’s that’s the age that we live.

Len Testa: Yeah, we’re walking through now we’re we’re coming up on the Walking by Lua Cove and again Steve would kill me but there are a bunch of different longhouse Again though, same sort of theme, right? You’ve got the first floor balconies, people, patios, which people can walk out on. You notice too that everywhere we’re walking, they’re facing away from the sun. Very, very smart, good design. So we’ve got the Neverland Club coming up to our left here. That’s actually still pretty popular for kids night out, right?

Jim Hill: Yes, but I remember it had only been open a little while and I came by… to sort of take a look at it and actually it was one of these things where it’s like I had to borrow a child. There are theme parks like that in the UK where you can’t get in if you’re an adult alone. Can I rent a kid? That one will do right there. How much for the children? Just the one. Take that to toehead one please. How much for the ginger? Yes. But now, it’s just interesting to watch how they’ve marched this concept out, with the effect of, you’re a parent, do you want to get away from your children for while? Let us take them. Here, have a Mai Tai. There you go. As we’re coming to the Neverland Club, I guess a little bit of background music here. A little musical interlude for our…

Len Testa: So I love you guys know you guys are listening to the podcast know that I love Mike Nolan Mouse World Radio So I think it’s one of the most fun things that you could do Or to set up as background music while you’re going about your day So so at work if you want to get a little fix of Disney, there’s always there’s always Mouse World Radio They’ve got four channels some of them are subscriber base You got to subscribe to live 365 But the funny thing is is Mouse World Radio has this Polynesian loop and it’s the entire Polynesian background loop

Jim Hill: Oh, but they do this war drum thing

Len Testa: I love it all. mean it’s all very except they do like this 15 minute thing of war drums And I swear to God 30 seconds in the second time you hear it you’re like, I gotta find another channel. Let me see some Westworld radio too because it’s it’s it’s the one thing I don’t like is the is that particular part of the Polynesian background music. It literally is the only thing I don’t like about the resort is the war-tinting background music. know that’s a small quibble, but I just want to give a shout out to Mike and Noel over here. Again, you could save that song. Save up all your stapling for the day. That’s all your shredding. look, the war-tinting is on. Time to get the shredder out. So what is this? Is this runoff here? This looks new actually. So Jim and I are walking back to the main lobby. We’ve got the monorail on our left. And here looks like they’ve put a watch way almost for water drainage. They’ve got a huge number of rocks and this actually doesn’t look very Hawaiian because they’d be black. they’ve got these rounded sort of boulders. It looks like a gully or a basin for runoff.

Jim Hill: This is the new green Disney.

Len Testa: This is the new green Disney? so it’s less long? Because this is a lot of rocks. is about, so it’s a channel. It’s about… So at 10, 15 feet wide and running all along one entire side of a building. this, this a erosion control?

Jim Hill: More to the effect of it. it, you know, drainage here gets interesting. I mean, if you look up behind us, we’re dealing with a very, very heavy slope.

Len Testa: Oh, right. So yeah. So the, so we’re sort of a, about halfway down. There’s a mound of dirt that rises about six feet higher than us on the way to the monorail. And then it actually slopes down towards the building. And now that I’ve said that if there’s a six foot slope, actually like a 12 foot slope from the top of the one thing to the building, I totally understand why they just put a drainage dish there. Nevermind. Looks significant for a while there. But all right, this is where they put half. We’ll just leave it at that. Okay. All right. Good enough.

Len Testa: Actually, we’re walking back towards the main building. Actually, this is a pretty nice entrance. Once you get past security here, if you’re dropping off at the front, it’s not a bad entrance. I don’t think it’s as formal or as impressive as the Grand Floridian entrance, which is actually a pretty nice under the portico. But this still isn’t bad. the thing I like about it, the thing I actually like about this the most is, like any good entrance, you’ve got a transition area from outside in the sun to indoors, and that’s a covered space. right that introduces you to the architecture and the theming right so if you if pull in you’ve got sort of the dugout canoe effect with the with the brown cross beams here you’ve got the tiki torches going you’ve got waterfalls on either side and somebody gives you a flower lay to come in so it’s a it’s a great entrance it’s not again not as formal as the grand floridian but again this this resort isn’t as formal as the grand floridian

Jim Hill: no and more to the point you really do get a sense of you know this in fact I don’t mean to be mean about this given that we just spent a day wandering around animal kingdom but you kind of know where to look here you kind of know where to go here you know no one no one tells you the front desk is this way so they just kind of kind of guide you this is a wonderful

Len Testa: Oh, well, hey, look at that snake. The island is moving. It’s probably a water cleaner. OK. Oh, this is the city. So Jim and I are just to the right of the entrance. walking up. There’s a small island. it’s about four feet long, about two feet wide. It’s got plants on it. And it’s literally floating. And we can see it moving throughout the small waterfall lagoon area to the right. And by the way, that water is crystal clear. So I’m thinking the thing that’s floating there is an actual water cleaner. I want one of these areas in my house. So we’ve got the tiki torch. We’ve got the sort of the signage or the decorative stick figure that’s, there’s the fishes pointing you in the direction. And then you’ve got the waterfall, beautiful area. Also another waterfall to your left. Also wonderful. So we’re walking in, and a bridge too, a bridge. That’s a great transition experience right there. very good. So we’re coming into the lobby again, another waterfall. To the right we’ve got check-in services, to the left we’ve got Bell Services. It works out really, really well. I think this is a great one. You notice the hidden Mickey right here in the slate, right in front of the entrance. remember when there used to be animals in here?

Jim Hill: used to be parrots.

Len Testa: Yeah, there used be parrots in here. What happened with the parrots?

Jim Hill: Well, kind of like Discovery Island. Somebody has to pay to feed the animals and more to the point, you know, if you really want to go see animals, we have a theme park. me buy, you a ticket and get you on a bus.

Len Testa: this is a shame. All right. Any last words for the for the Polynesian gym? We’re going to hop on the monorail and go to the Grand Floridine.

Jim Hill: Works for me.

Len Testa: So we’re back. We’re continuing on our monorail resort tour. is singing because we’re over at the Grand Floridian wedding pavilion. We just walked over from the poly. The wedding pavilion is on our right. Sorry, the reception area is behind us. The pavilion itself is to our right. Actually, my brother got married here.

Jim Hill: Did he really?

Len Testa: He’s still married too, so there must be something to it. It’s lovely actually. the wedding pavilion. It’s sort of a non-denominational church-like structure. And there’s an altar. But behind the altar is an arched window which perfectly frames Cinderella Castle. It’s a complete coincidence, I’m sure, but it works just from a visual. You just can’t get anything better than that.

Jim Hill: Well, and that brings us to the classic story of the year of the… What is it? The 25th anniversary?

Len Testa: Yeah. Where they did the castle as the…

Jim Hill: As the cake.

Len Testa: by the way, you got this giant birthday cake in the background for your wedding photo. And they literally, they had brides who were just furious about…

Jim Hill: Apoplectic over it?

Len Testa: Yeah. I got a monorail going… Monorail black coming over us. Hello, Monorail Bach. Hello, people in the Monorail. So we’re walking towards the, we’re walking towards the spa, the soon-to-be-extinct spa, or actually something’s… Jim, there’s some… there’s a huge blue wall between the wedding pavilion and the main building, the Grand Floridian. says, please pardon our appearance. This area is being refurbished for your future enjoyment. Jim, what sort of future enjoyment might they be having?

Jim Hill: D-V-C. Again, this is where people want to be. want to be… to the Magic Kingdom? Close to the Magic Kingdom. They want to be near the monorail. so, they’re systematically walking around and doing just this. So the walls, by the way, the blue walls extend out past…

Len Testa: So from the beach, from the seven seas lagoon beach, all the way to the walkway, the blue walls extend out. In fact, the perimeter of the blue wall extends past the monorail. So again, Jim and you and I talked about this on the way over. know, Disney’s recently announced that the monorail is only going to run for one hour past park closing for Disney Resort guests. And so we contacted Disney and said, well look, is this a permanent thing? Is this a budget cutting thing? Or are you guys just doing this to… Increase the amount of time you have at night to do DVC construction for the Grand Floridian and of course Disney hasn’t announced Formally the construction of the Grand Floridian DVC. So all we got back from them was we don’t know anything about a DVC and Yeah, it’s as far as we know it’s permanent at least but you know So they were completely insulting our challenges because they had to file permits for the DVC. There are permits on file with the Orange County Construction board, you to a lot of the the construction to continue But at least they didn’t say, well, we did a survey and guests don’t want them on a roller run for more than an hour. Guests actually asked us to do this. At least they didn’t insult us and say that.

Jim Hill: Well, I think this is what I always find fascinating about. Disney’s as a company of storytellers in the… They’re remarkably bad about lying. The line could use a little bit more. For storytellers, that should be their unofficial motto. For storytellers, we suck at lying. The other thing, for them, it’s sort of like they’re big into the once upon a time and the whole notion of you’re doing once upon a time and somebody runs in and goes, Rosebud was a sled! this story.

Len Testa: No no no no no. Back up back back up. hold on. So we got a little bit to say there’s not a break. As you say there’s a little break in the wall but but there’s not. Can’t see anything from here. I’m sure Disney’s secure to be honest like yeah. Incidentally. Hello. So we’re walking. It’s actually a nice walk. It’s not as shaded as I as I originally thought it might be. They could put trees on either side of the walkway by the way to increase the shade. But now we’re walking up behind looks like we’re behind one of the the Grand Floridian pools and we’re coming up on the main building. in the straight ahead of us, we see the main entrance, the portico, also the monorail station for the Grand Floridian. We’re sort of walking into the west side of the.

Jim Hill: The building? was about right, yeah. It’s lovely structure, it’s big. No, but at the same time it was, this, as we mentioned earlier, is the site of what was supposed to be the Venetian.

Len Testa: This was going be the Venetian, right.

Jim Hill: But when Eisner came in, and again, this is for better for worse, this is the hotel that Eisner fell in love with and became the architecture patron. This one. All those ugly hotels are on the back of this one. Michael just got fat. with architecture working on this hotel. But the argument was if we’re putting a brand new hotel into Walt Disney World, rather than doing the Venetian, you know, because we have the Polynesian right there, why don’t we do something that ties in with Florida’s own history? And this is, the idea behind this is this is one of the great resort hotels from the 1920s.

Len Testa: So the Flagler era of hotels.

Jim Hill: That’s exactly. So you take the train down to Florida for your vacation and this is the sort of place you’d stay in.

Len Testa: And time as we’re walking, we’ve got an area here to our left that’s going along the walkway. Between the walkway and the monorail, there’s this huge path of overgrown grass. So this must be the grass equivalent of the stones we saw at the Polynesian, where this is supposed to be Disney’s cheap attempt at water runoff control. So if you’re standing here looking at the path, the grass in the median between the path and the monorail is a good foot taller than everything else and you can kind of see where the mower or lawnmower sunk into the the mud in one area so this must be where they’re doing a runoff between the monorail and this that’s kind of funny so so apparently they run out of they ran out of money for stones and they’re just letting the grass grow over here I guess can’t see it it’s fine it’s backstage

Jim Hill: More to the point, we are literally at the edge of the construction site. Trust me, when we have finished with our not DVC property, you will see all sorts of landscaping, all sorts of plusing because, you know, what people will be paying to stay there.

Len Testa: That’s right. and I heard that they’re actually, so one of the interesting things about the, the DVC, that’s not a DVC that’s going in here, they’re actually putting, they’re taking some of the beachfront real estate and converting it to parking. So you’re going to have beachfront parking at the Grand Floridian.

Jim Hill: That’s that’s an interesting use of real estate So but but again, it’s just the notion is they want to mix it up They want to mix you know the whole notion of you arrive I mean you literally park your current step out you’re looking at seven seas of Lagoon.

Len Testa: so what’s the so it’s the it’s the entrance experience that they’re doing there that Okay, I kind of make sense now now I get it. Thank you Jim Thank you Jim for making sense of Disney’s real estate design for me again storytelling stories all right So we’re walking into the Grand Floridian we’re open the doors by the way Jim have you ever had tea at the Grand Floridian?

Jim Hill: Yes, yes. fabulous. I’ve had, I mean, have a tea in England that’s not as good as this.

Len Testa: Well, get it, but it’s one of these things where, can I have another little tiny sandwich, please?

Jim Hill: Yes, please. More cucumbers, sir, more cucumbers.

Len Testa: So we’re walking into the Grand Floridian. again, oh, so one quick design item on here. So when you’re coming into the Grand Floridian, you don’t actually walk immediately into the lobby. Just like at the Animal Kingdom and just like at the Magic Kingdom where you walk in and your view is constrained by a low ceiling. Same thing at the Grand Floridian. You’ve got, um… You come in from the side, there’s a low, I’d say maybe it’s a 10 foot ceiling, that constrains your view almost all the way until you get to the lobby. And then the lobby opens up and it’s BAM, it’s four or five stories of view all available to you. So it really makes a remarkable thing. You’re walking in, you’re slowing down, you’re looking up. It’s really great way to do the space. And as beautiful as it is now, in five or six weeks when they do this for Christmas.

Jim Hill: yeah, they’ll put in the big gingerbread house, actually made out of gingerbread. It’d be like Home Depot meets Betty Crocker. it’s insane. And in fact, there are families that literally, you know, they book their vacation around when you’re putting up the tree. And they will come out.

Len Testa: When is the gingerbread coming up?

Jim Hill: But it’s literally, it’s an event. They will stay up all night and watch, you know, they…

Len Testa: watch the tree?

Jim Hill: They watch the tree go up. That’s nice. It’s a event. No, it’s just a wonderful moment.

Jim Hill: Now, it’s… What I love about this hotel is just, again, the sense of space. That, you you come into this feel of the 1920s, of what it must have been like to stay in Florida at that time. But yet, you know, the various little Disney touches. You know, in fact, this is also the hotel that a lot of the celebrities stay in, in fact. Besides that, Shamin.

Len Testa: Of course. I have a sister-in-law who was staying here and it was just one thing she kept, whenever she got in the elevator, it was Drew Carey. Like he’s operating the thing. Third floor, lingerie. After about the third or fourth day, it’s like he turned to her and said, okay, let me tell you where I’m gonna go.

Jim Hill: Exactly. In fact, you know…

Len Testa: You’re here again, it’s free? Is that good for you? Because clearly we’re on the same schedule.

Jim Hill: At one point, know, that’s like Sister La Sherie, it’s like they’re literally over at the ice cream place on Main Street and Carrie came up to her and it was like, literally, deliberately this big comic scene, like, look, I told you to stop following me. And then just sat down with the family and it was just, but he also, he loves the Disney parks. fact, he ran the Disneyland Half Marathon.

Len Testa: Did he really?

Jim Hill: Yeah, he was there. He’s lost a ton of weight. He’s lost like 180 pounds.

Len Testa: Yeah, he looks good.

Jim Hill: He barely looks like himself. Well, that’s a thing, you know.

Len Testa: The funny thing was, we were at the Disneyland Marathon, right? Half marathon. you know, they’re calling out the past winners of the race, know, like 10 minutes before the race, they’re calling out celebrities. So they put the camera on Drew Curry. And I’m telling you, that man could not care less that he was on camera. He was trying to ready to psych himself up to run. He was getting mentally prepared. Get that damn camera out of my face.

Len Testa: It’s either here or Yacht or Beach Club when they bring the people in. Candlelight professional.

Jim Hill: Candlelight professional. Yeah. you know, but the notion is that, if you’re going to put me up here and bring me to Disney, I’ll do it.

Len Testa: Yeah. So. That’s not bad. Should take a walk through the

Jim Hill: Sure, sure. We have a piano. We’ve also got on the second floor of the Grand Floridian, we’ve got space for the orchestra. And then we’ve got the, is this a bird cage here? This is like a two-story.

Len Testa: Yep. Or is it a people cage, Misbehaving children, go here.

Jim Hill: And for Rupa Salt. No, I mean, again, early on when they were trying to do this in the Authentic 20 style, again, your live orchestra at night, in fact that’s… And they do have a live orchestra at night. it’s such a definitive sense of space. And then you look here, you’ve got your caged elevator.

Len Testa: That’s right, the elevator and the birdcage are both cages that… one’s a people cage. There you go. it just… But it kind of makes sense thematically. The other thing I like too is that the stairwells are not So there’s one stairwell, it’s sort of off to the lobby. All the stairs are off the lobby. You can’t actually see them. It’s an interesting design thing. And the elevators too, as well.

Jim Hill: But at the same time, this is one of these hotels that because of the level of detail, because of the marble floors, there is so much upkeep, so much…

Len Testa: Oh yeah, have you ever been here like at 2 o’clock in the morning?

Jim Hill: No. So you should walk around at o’clock in the morning. It’s non-stop activity. It’s like they’re painting a boat every night. I think they start at one end and work their way to the other.

Len Testa: So we’re coming up on the Grand Floridian Cafe. It’s actually a nice space. looking out, we’ll walk out the back. Let’s walk out the back real quick. And we’ll come back in and do the rest of the main building. Grand Floridian Cafe, lovely view. And it’s got that of quintessential Key West, you know. early Florida sort of view you’re sitting at a table but all the tables have these views on these huge windows these windows are like two foot squares and they overlook well you can see the the other buildings in the background the one of the other K buildings in the background but it overlooks a fountain and then you’ve got a huge pool in this it’s the Grand Floridians pools are like the size of small small atolls they’re huge huge pools

Len Testa: Actually, one of the best photos we have for the color companion. I don’t know if it’s actually, if it made the cut or if it got cropped, but we’ve got this photo of one of the Grand Floridian pools. And it’s from the edge of one side of the pool. And in the middle of the pool is this family of ducks who apparently thought, Lake Tower, Grand Floridian, sorry, Bay Lake, sorry, Seven Seas Lagoon, Grand Floridian Pool, same thing. It’s nice. So we’re walking up towards Narcosis, sort of towards the Magic Kingdom. clockwise direction for the parks. Have you ever stood here?

Jim Hill: years and years ago.

Len Testa: Yeah. I have a love hate relationship with this resort. Why is that? So I think the theming, the outside theming is lovely. I like the walks. And I like the pool sizes, size. And I like the fact that it’s not very crowded late at night. The thing I can’t wrap my head around, two things. One, the cost is incredible. And then Disney bills it as its flagship resort and as a deluxe resort, but it doesn’t compare to, let’s say the Waldorf is a deluxe resort or the the Rich Carlton is a deluxe resort. I don’t think that anyone who stated those three resorts would put, or those two resorts plus this one, would put the Grand Floridian in that same category. Those are legitimate four and a half five star hotels. This is a four.

Jim Hill: But at the same time, it’s just, this is one of these hotels where the proximity to the Magic Kingdom coupled with the design, you know, it just, if it’s not a five star, it looks like a five star. On the outside, looks like a, okay, legitimately looks like a five star on the outside. again, it’s not, when it comes down to amenities and stuff like that, it’s, well, it’s got the spa. But they just think in terms of room quality and in terms of, let’s say, concierge service. probably not the same as the Waldorf for the Ritz-Golton. How many hotels have a yacht that you can rent? mean, have you?

Len Testa: I’ve never actually been on the Grand…

Jim Hill: Let’s go to the other…

Len Testa: So, Jim mentions the yacht because we’re actually walking by to the right between… on the way to Narcissus and we can actually see the Grand I. Yeah, we could rent a yacht. How much is the yacht to rent, wanted for the day of the evening

Jim Hill: I think for the evening it starts at 1500 really and then from there it’s like you want food you want you want a captain I’ll do it myself it’s it’s very impressive very fast

Len Testa: okay so we’re walking up towards the marina right now between between buildings we can see the the grand one this is the captain’s shipyard

Jim Hill: Yes, I did a fireworks cruise on this once. Again, not on my dime. Got invited out to, you know, chat with Thurston Howe III. There we go. Turns out, Thurston Howe IV. You know, but it was so bizarre. It’s just why? Because again, it’s just this whole notion of, you know, you’re out on the water and then you park and you sit there with your champagne flutes and you then talk about the little people. Actually, you probably don’t talk about the little people because it doesn’t occur to you to think about the little people.

Len Testa: I said to the flash then, well you can’t get off.

Jim Hill: Exactly. We’re going to be talking for two or three hours and it’s like. It’s like the event at the Magic Kingdom the other day where you could come in but you couldn’t leave until they told you you could leave.

Len Testa: So a lovely view actually of the marina right from right here. is our outside conkey. We’ve got the grand one right in front of us. I’m on a green walking by and then in the distance we see the the floats for the electrical water pageant.

Jim Hill: Again, we are here just for the 40th anniversary. And the irony is that was literally slapped together as a… It’s a bunch of lights on floats, on barges.

Len Testa: know, you know, this is only gonna be here for, you know, welcome to Mickey’s Starland.

Jim Hill: exactly. Hey, that lasted 20 years, In fact, it was funny last time in the hotel watching the Spanish channel for Disney and it’s like, hey, Spanish people can still go to Mickey’s Starland. That’s right, that’s They haven’t changed that. The, huh, that’s weird. How do you say I’m sorry in Spanish? This doesn’t exist anymore.

Len Testa: So the other interesting thing I think about this, so we’re looking at it, over the marina and there’s this little inlet where the electrical, the water pageant barges sit. Is that the only reason there’s not a walkway from here to the Grand Floridian to the Kingdom? Because you could, I mean look, you could walk to the Magic Kingdom from here. mean, it’s a little bit of a hike, but it’s certainly not much farther than what we just did from the Polynesian to the Grand Floridian. Why isn’t there a walkway? And the other thing too is, Jim, you noticed there’s lights over there by where the monorail just passed? There’s a walkway that goes from the Magic Kingdom Literally to the very end of the land by the inlet where the where the electrical water pageant barges are stored all they have to do is pave the other half between that and the Grand Floridian and put a put a bridges and they’d have a thing why don’t they have a walkway there

Jim Hill: well, you know if actually if you remember the The commemorative pavement stones.

Len Testa: Yes, I remember that we walked over a bunch of them actually on the way here

Jim Hill: If they had sold better There would be a walkway? mean, literally, was supposed to remember with the walk around the world. was, you know, of that was the plan. And they did. There was a plan or at least there were designs drawn up for, you know, what would

Len Testa: we like a tour of the Grand One? I would love a tour of the Grand One. May we have a tour of the Grand One? This is fabulous! do I do? This is total luck! Smile? How about a hug? about a hug? I am extremely happy about this. Wow, come aboard! We’re expecting you! The love boat! This is totally unscheduled, but we’re getting a tour of the Grand One. This is amazing! So we’re walking down, is Captain Gregory.

Len Testa: Thank you. Just Greg. Just Just Greg. Oh, it’s informal here. are actually staying at the Grand Floridian tonight, so this is totally could possibly be legit. Wow, this is we’re actually walking on the we’re on the dock right now. We’re walking onto the onto the boat. Wow, this is incredible. Laurel talked us into this. This is great. Thank you so much. Captain. Pirates. So.

Len Testa: So we’re on the grand windows, so we’re walking in. is a very plush room. Ooh, leather seats.

Len Testa: Wow, this is nice. Here’s the sink. So there’s a sink for drinks? guess we’re gonna do drinks. This is the sink for washing your dishes. Okay, so this is where someone else washes my dishes. This is stove. There’s a stove in here!

Len Testa: So we’re living room. Let me see if we can describe this. We’ve got seats for one, two, three, four, five, five people, all leather. It’s air conditioned. We’ve got a small TV. We’ve got a little console there. We’ve got a small kitchenette. We’ve got a table for dining with one, two, three, four, five, six more seats. It actually goes down. There’s more. Well, the bedrooms are down here. There’s bedrooms in this thing. Dude, I’m so renting this. my God. is amazing. One bedroom.

Len Testa: There’s more than one bedroom here. Here’s two bedrooms. my god. Look at this. so there’s okay. So we’re in the green one There’s a small bedroom here. It’s so what this This is a this is a full bed, I think But it’s got lighting. my god. This is amazing. It’s got a closet This is like a Japanese hotel room though. is wonderfully small. Oh, it’s got a little skylight. And then there’s another bedroom with, oh, there’s a bathroom too. Oh, this is like the world’s smallest shower. Dude, you’ve got to make up your mind before you get in this thing. What you’re doing. This is, wow, this is nice. That’s a small, it’s got to sit down in the shower. So we’re in the shower. It’s like an airplane shower times maybe, sorry, airplane bathroom times two. And then this is a door. Ah, door to the other thing. To the first bedroom. And then the other bedroom.

Len Testa: Wow, this is nice. It’s got, again, essentially the size of like two or three, maybe the size of three airplane bathrooms, but it’s got a full shower with a seat. It’s got a small sink. It’s got a medicine cabinet. It’s got, I guess, place to hold onto rails. It’s got a small head. But then the master bedroom is really amazing. Think it’s got an elevated bed. It’s about hip high, so about three feet off the ground. It’s a, what is this, a full? It’s a queen.

Jim Hill: It’s got a TV console, it’s got windows on either side with shades, it’s got a sunlight?

Len Testa: Skylight. Thank you. You can actually go out through there. It’s an escape hatch. That’s awesome. this could be, if I needed an evil lair, this could be the escape hatch. Wow, this is really nice. This is incredible, and this is storage. closet space. Nice. So could you spend the night on this if you wanted to?

Captain Greg: You could live on here if you’d like.

Len Testa: I mean, you could rent it for the night like an entire day.

Captain Greg: You can’t but I mean it worked this morning.

Len Testa: see if it works. Yep, it’s working. There’s another so he’s he’s pressed a secret button and and the stairs are raising up and washer dryer. There’s a washer dryer under the stairs in the boat. This is amazing. That is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I think we lost Jim. Jim is stowing away apparently. Wow. for vacuum?

Captain Greg: Yep.

Len Testa: Central Vac? Of course, because every boat needs a central vacuum system. So what do you rent the Grand One for?

Captain Greg: rent the Grand One for… $520 an hour.

Len Testa: $520 an hour. So 24 hours would be $12,000 a day.

Captain Greg: Pretty much. These are bulk rate for…

Len Testa: You wouldn’t be able… I don’t know if you could 24 hours because it takes a crew of two. they would have to alternate two crews. Okay. But you could rent it from like 8pm to 8am?

Captain Greg: Probably could, yep.

Len Testa: But according to this you can rent it, you know, for example somebody took there for 25th birthday

Captain Greg: We have somebody who was in 25th

Len Testa: 25th Oh kids My husband my wonderful husband rented my 25th birthday Kids, I love them We have somebody who rented it so they could ask

Captain Greg: it was Ethan asked Erica to marry him on

Len Testa: Proposals? Oh proposals, that’s a great idea

Captain Greg: We have a couple that took their parents out for the 50th anniversary

Len Testa: Oh, that’d be so nice But again, it’s just it’s the sort of thing you do for Something hugely significant. So where does the crew stay while you’re living it up in here?

Captain Greg: Up above?

Len Testa: floor. There’s another floor?

Captain Greg: Yeah. That’s where you drive it from.

Len Testa: Oh, that’s right. There’s no wheel here. The wet bar’s up there also.

Captain Greg: There’s a wet bar.

Len Testa: Of course there’s a wet bar. How did I not know that? So 5.20 an hour. 8 p.m. to 8 It comes with two crew.

Captain Greg: Two captains basically.

Len Testa: captains. case the first captain can’t fulfill his duties. don’t think he’d be to get as many people in this as La Cama. It’s like a autopilot. We did an event yesterday where we rented out La Hacienda at Epcot for 300 people. And yeah, which was was a great event. It was a lot of fun. It was like signing for a house though at the end. But this is just a whole other level of awesome. Very cool. Well, thank you. This is great. Thank you so much for this. Coming up. Wow, that was unexpected. That was fabulous. that’s where the cruise stays. So wait, so just to tell you the difference between crew and guests, the guests have this lovely thing. The crew essentially have this plastic enclosed thing. At least you have a padded seat up there. So that’s not bad.

Captain Greg: Guests can also go up there some some guests go up there also to watch because they do the fireworks.

Len Testa: Oh fireworks cruises Yeah, so they think some of the guests will go up there and watch it too. That’s fantastic too many most of them Yeah, I’d say that 18 18 18 people It’s amazing. It’s one two Three four five. Oh, that’d be great. Does anybody get seasick on this? Is it does it rock a lot or is it because you’re on an enclosed bay?

Captain Greg: It’s not bad I don’t think anything on these lakes would make this thing rock.

Len Testa: Okay, yeah, looks like it’s a pretty substantial craft. Well, thank you, Gregory. Thank you, Gregory. This is wonderful. Thank you. Wow, that was awesome. I’ve never seen anything like that before. That’s incredible.

Len Testa: I don’t think we can top that. I don’t think we can top that. That was great. let’s walk back to the Grand Floridian. We’ll talk a little bit about it. Just sort of to wrap up this series. That was incredible. So anything, so Grand Floridian, DBC, when is the DBC coming online? you know?

Jim Hill: Oh, if all goes according to plan. And remember that they’re going to have to build out into Seven Seas Lagoon. There’s going to be construction footings out there for your parking lot entrance thing. We are talking… 2013?

Len Testa: Oh, so a couple years yet.

Jim Hill: Yep. It’s going to have lovely views, but the what is the view of the DVC going to be the poly or the contemporary? What’s the view?

Len Testa: Interesting question, because there’s actually an island that’s going to obscure a certain part of this, and part of the plan is, can we do some selective cutting there?

Jim Hill: On the island?

Len Testa: Yeah.

Jim Hill: Oh. you know, that gets interesting. know, because it just sort of like… If we start talking about demolishing an island?

Len Testa: Yeah, just to improve the

Jim Hill: Oh, I can see like a one-time Krakatoa type event. Where they sell the hell out of it. It would fit in with the Polynesian theme. Some sort of virgin sacrifice. We got the crocodile thing going on. Bring me a Disney princess, I’ll do the Completely fits in.

Len Testa: That’s great. Alright well, Jim what do say we head over to Epcot and see what’s going on over there?

Jim Hill: Fabulous.

Len Testa: Thank you guys for listening to the show. We’re heading over Epcot next so that’ll be another episode. This is Len Testen and Jim Hale signing off. Stupid Judy, stupid energy. This has been a production of Mouse World Radio.

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