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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In this episode of the Disney Dish walkaround series, Len Testa and Jim Hill explore Disney’s Animal Kingdom while uncovering the stories behind the park’s abandoned concepts, broken attractions, and forgotten design ideas. From the original plans for Discovery River boats and Beastly Kingdom to the troubled history of Dino-Rama and Expedition Everest’s infamous “Disco Yeti,” this episode dives deep into the creative compromises, budget cuts, and Imagineering decisions that shaped Animal Kingdom into the park guests know today.

Listen to Animal Kingdom’s Lost Attractions, Broken Yeti, and Dino-Rama Secrets

Episode Highlights

• Jim shares how he first learned about Disney’s Animal Kingdom through early 1990s Disney surveys
• The original “Disney’s Wild Animal Kingdom” concept presentation and how details leaked to the Orlando Sentinel
• Why the Oasis entrance area intentionally slows guests down — and why most visitors miss the point
• The abandoned Discovery River boat ride and its planned fire-breathing dragon effects
• Early concepts for It’s Tough to Be a Bug before Pixar became involved
• The original plans for Dinosaur and the huge ride concept that never got built
• How Dino-Rama was created as a budget compromise
• The backstory behind Chester and Hester’s roadside attraction aesthetic
• The operational and legal concerns surrounding Primeval Whirl
• Why Finding Nemo – The Musical became one of Disney’s most successful stage shows
• The history of Expedition Everest’s broken Yeti animatronic
• Why Disney hasn’t fully repaired the “Disco Yeti” despite years of fan complaints

Animal Kingdom’s Lost Attractions, Broken Yeti, and Dino-Rama Secrets Transcript

Len Testa: This is Len Testa. We’re here at Disney’s Animal Kingdom for another exciting podcast with Jim Hill. It’s part of the Unofficial Guide to Disney Dish series. I gotta start off by saying it’s incredibly hot here today, so you’ll hear me sweating and panting along the way. But without further ado, here’s our good friend, Jim Hill. Jim, first, I know you want to thank your parole officer for letting you back out here. Is there anything you’d like to say to the governor?

Jim Hill: You know, it’s so nice that they dropped the charges. Nobody saw me do it. You can’t prove anything.

Len Testa: Alright, so we’re here at the beginning of the Animal Kingdom at the Oasis. It’s what we call in theme parks, the transition area.

Len Testa: into the rest of the park.

Jim Hill: And like Vlad Ziplin said, there are two paths you can go by. In the long run, you’re still on Discovery Island. have to this story. First of all, around. Right here, there’s a gentleman. Go crazy, he walked away. The survey taker.

Len Testa: right. My guy’s taking surveys at Disney?

Jim Hill: OK. My Disney’s Animal Kingdom story, first one, starts with a survey taker. It’s 1993. Everyone do the flashback.

Jim Hill: I am walking into the Magic Kingdom.

Jim Hill: And here is a survey taker. And again, everyone else on the planet, with clipboard, they’ve got leprosy. It’s like, have learned, critically Disney, you walk up to them, and in this case, Optimus said, oh hi, what are you doing? He said, well, we’re surveying for a potential fourth theme park. And I was like, really? Really? You say, did you stroke your beard like at a fourth park, you say? And it’s like, they literally take us into the Walt Disney Store. Over on Main Street, where the exposition hall.

Jim Hill: Now we sit down at the theater, it’s myself, Jeff Lang, and my then wife Michelle Smith, and we proceed to watch the concept film for what was known then as Disney’s wild animal kingdom. And they literally, it’s all this amazing concept. Now of course, me being the weasel that I am, they’ve painted me a survey with a pencil that I’m to be filling out. I’m I’m notes. I’m reading it. notes. Doing sketches. and of course, the the fucking survey. I’m gonna need another one of these.

Jim Hill: No, it gets better, we’re so literally, you know, you know, it’s over. It’s like, oh, I’m brain full. But it’s like, I didn’t take it any damn it. It’s like, it’s a hard conversation. So, well, can get on. Then the people go, well, you know, we’re doing service here today, and tomorrow we’re doing over at Disney MGM. Really? Really? Approximately what time would you be staffing this particular endeavor? So that’s the thing. So Jeff and Michelle and I then go, and we literally sit at a table and do a brain dump, like, OK, then we say this, then we say this, this.

Jim Hill: literally the next day, Jeff and I are over in MGM. What a We’re walking around, head swiveling, somewhere here there will be a person with a clipboard and sure enough a little plaid shirt suddenly standing at the corner and so we walk in, this time we’re prepared. Alright, Jeff has his video camera. This is the big shoulder mounted one back in day, right?

Len Testa: Absolutely, but what Jeff does is he puts his camera back on the floor and hits record so we don’t get pictures.

Jim Hill: but we get full audio. Alright, so, so, again, now we have the full concept, the full information, but of course, this is back in the Gutenberg days, there was no internet, you had to literally go from Idaho South.

Len Testa: You said, Gutenberg like the Bible, not Steve.

Jim Hill: yes. Alright. As I was saying, he’s…

Len Testa: Police Academy have anything to do with the story, Jim?

Jim Hill: I just think that he’s going door to door now as well, that could well be. So, anyway, jump ahead, it’s March 18th, 1994, day my daughter is born. And I’m literally sitting in Arnold Palmer Hospital in downtown Orlando, and it’s this wonderful day and I’m filled with benevolence, know, and it’s happy spirits. And I open the Orlando Sentinel and they have a cover story about the Four Theme Park. And it’s like, and the thing is that clearly somebody talked to them but didn’t have all of the information, but it’s Leslie Doolittle, used to be the tourism reporter for Orlando. And it’s like, happy, I’ve had a child.

Jim Hill: I pick up the phone that’s there in the Hey, what is it? Guess what we have? And that was the thing. Literally a day, day and a half later, I’m in the offices of the Sentinel. it’s like, in fact, where this gets interesting is one of the people I dealt with that day was Craig Duzern, who’s now the head of PR.

Len Testa: yeah. That’s right. He went from the Sentinel to Disney.

Jim Hill: That’s exactly right. So I’m in a room with Craig Duzern and Leslie Doolittle. It’s like, well, here’s everything. It’s a transcript of the next day.

Len Testa: That’s probably an awkward thing when he works for Disney.

Jim Hill: Well, that could well be.

Jim Hill: But no, we were intimate with this park. fact, one of my favorite photos, ended up at Disney magazine during the construction phase from the tree farm, the road all the way through to 1-8-2 was open. So one day Michelle, Alice, and I, along with our friend David Schiller, drive through the construction site. And it’s like literally at this point, all they had were giant plywood signs up saying like, one, this is where the Tree of Life was going to go, two, this is where Asia.

Jim Hill: the first family. I’m kidding, because we have a picture of us standing next to the one. There was no tree, but we were first in this park.

Len Testa: can put a time capsule there.

Jim Hill: That would be funny. So I want Disney to recognize that at point.

Len Testa: did you get onto the construction site? Did you play lost tourist?

Jim Hill: Well, know, it’s… We’re sorry, we’re Canadian.

Len Testa: What is the phrase? It’s better to ask forgiveness?

Jim Hill: beg for forgiveness. Tom said not entirely unknown here.

Jim Hill: Anyway, all right, so back to here at the Oasis. it’s different than any transition that you’ve got in any other theme park. There’s no Main Street, right?

Len Testa: That’s the big thing, right? So the studios, you’ve got Sunset Boulevard, or sorry, Hollywood Boulevard, Magic Kingdom you’ve got Main Street, Epcot you’ve got sort of the Future World Plaza.

Jim Hill: And here’s the problem though, that because people here at Walt Disney World have spent the week being trained by those, this facility confuses them. and in fact, you know, and in fact, to be honest, when you’re here in the morning, where people are going, the safari is open, run to the back, you know, they lose out on, this is supposed to, according to Joe Rohde, this is the area that’s supposed to teach you that as you go through Animal Kingdom, you’re supposed to move slowly, you’re supposed to take in your environment, notice that…

Jim Hill: you there were small animal clothes and closes off to the side. It teaches you the go capillary for the rest of the theme park.

Len Testa: It does actually. I mean, if you’re, if you walk slow enough, you totally get it. I mean, the fact that there’s, there’s a tree canopy, right? There’s no, there’s no tree canopy anywhere else. And if you did your point, I mean, if you go left and right, you look left and right, you can definitely see that there are, that there are animals in both places.

Jim Hill: But I think in fact, in hindsight, in fact, a lot of imaginers have talked about as a standalone attraction, this would be so much more successful. But when people come down here and stay in Disney hotels and go to the other, parks that’s the vocabulary they bring in. I must march to the first thing. And of course not that anybody would be suggesting a way they could move to the path or quickly.

Len Testa: No I don’t know how that would ever happen. don’t know. This simply can’t exist for that.

Jim Hill: but no it’s Rody worked hard. mean they worked on the entrance for this thing that multiple iterations. fact it’s beautiful. You know the thing that amazes me about the entrance is so they’ve mixed trees but notice how much bamboo is here.

Len Testa: Yeah and the bamboo is here because it grows like weeds, right? mean, essentially it’s hard weed. But it’s really nice when storms kind of roll in. At the end of the day, you can hear the bamboo clinking together. It’s a nice effect, actually.

Jim Hill: Well, the other thing, frankly, I don’t think they took into account when they were building this park is that the canopy that they’ve created, as beautiful it is, does hold the heat, does hold the humidity.

Len Testa: A little bit, yeah. It’s honestly all that’s in here today. Yeah. But again, just a wonderful area, beautiful design, but in a lot of ways confusing for a lot of guests.

Jim Hill: And again, we’re gonna be dealing with the confusion issue a lot in this same park.

Len Testa: In this particular park? Should we walk to the right?

Jim Hill: Sure.

Len Testa: So we have two paths, we’re gonna go to the right. As we’re walking, White Stork is walking across our path. It’s amazing how realistic and lifelike they make those things. It’s really nice. You mentioned though that if the Oasis was its own attraction, would be much more successful. I think that’s true with the trails over on Discovery Island behind Tree of Life.

Jim Hill: Those are amazing.

Len Testa: are. They’re beautiful and no one sees them.

Jim Hill: No, absolutely. that, again, this is the problem with this park. In a lot of ways, they did their job too well. It’s so unstructured that people don’t know what to do and they miss out on some of the more beautiful things. And look, a survey guy.

Len Testa: A survey guy, Okay, nevermind. It’s be good. distracted. Fist in park, he could be the guy. Squirrel.

Jim Hill: All right, anyway. No, it’s… It’s because people, you know, it’s just, they’re looking to bring their Disney visual vocabulary and it’s like, okay, that’s the entrance and I exit through the gift shop. And this is not that part.

Jim Hill: This is the park where it’s like, well, what’s over here? Well, what’s over there? And, you know, have a strolling unstructured day.

Len Testa: Right. On top of, you know, big attractions that drive you deep into the park. So that’s it. That’s the other than the tree of life. really is no we need it. Here’s an architectural element I wanted to call out. So we’re walking underneath a small rock bridge. And if Sam Genoway were here, Sam Genoway, our urban design guy, if Sam were here, Sam would say that the purpose of the two rock structures that we’re going through are served to constrain your view so that as you get through the second one everything opens up like a huge panorama. This is actually a visual trick you see in lots of theme parks. You actually see it on roller coasters too.

Jim Hill: no no absolutely.

Len Testa: On California Screamin’ in Disneyland, they the same thing with the canopy. So as you go up you’re under the canopy and then as you reach the top the canopy ends and you see nothing but blue sky. It’s an amazing effect. So we’ll pass that now.

Jim Hill: It’s a great storytelling, and again, the notion here that you’ve come through the Oasis and you’re about to get your big reveal of the tree

Len Testa: It is, it’s the big reveal. This is other thing I think is interesting, on the way out of the Oasis, you can actually walk through a path that doesn’t lead you back to the entrance, it’s a circle.

Jim Hill: Well, that part in and of itself is moderately surprising. The fact that there’s not a cart at either end of it, I think is the more surprising thing. Well, give them that. There’s a certain level of purity to this park. We don’t entirely pick you up by the ankles and shake you, but oh god, if they could.

Len Testa: We’re walking over the bridge on… What’s name of this river?

Jim Hill: Discovery River.

Len Testa: Discovery River and Discovery Island. that makes sense. Almost like they thought of it that way. So we’re walking onto Discovery Island. We see the Tree of Life off in the distance. We’re gonna go counter anti-clockwise, as they say, because the Coriolis effect is strong with us.

Jim Hill: Yes, we are north of the equator.

Len Testa: right, Tree of Life. So actually we’re coming up with the Discovery Island character landing.

Jim Hill: is the aborted boat for ride, yes, so yes.

Jim Hill: So many, you know, again, so many opening year attractions that never quite worked out.

Len Testa: it was a boat ride that just went around the island, right?

Jim Hill: Well, it slowly, it was supposed to introduce you to the world. In fact, you know, the in theory between introducing you to, you know, they had the wonderful Iguana done a figure down by the river and they were supposed to have the, the dragon that was going to come out of the cave and breathe fire at you and you were supposed to, you know, have your boat bumped by a horrible, horrible sea monster that the guy… the guy was actually going have to play a liar to put back to sleep. I mean, there were all these…

Len Testa: A liar, like a small harp?

Jim Hill: There go. I swear, I’m not a liar. Anyway. No, mean, it’s… It was a park that… it’s strange. They’re…

Jim Hill: This park turned out to be so much more expensive than Disney ever anticipated and

Jim Hill: What’s frustrating is that so much of the money, at least for the opening, it went back to the of the house because you don’t like the elephants to get out. It’s problematic,

Len Testa: Yes. When the lions eat the tourists, that’s a bad thing. It’s going to drop revenue.

Jim Hill: think it’s not in the short term, in the long term. But with so much money spent on back of the house issues with elephant barns and enclosures where you can medicate your giant cats and that sort of thing, it meant that when the park opened, they had to kick

Jim Hill: And one of the places they did it was discovery, you know, riverboat ride and tourists were furious because they’d stand in line for 45 minutes and they’d get on a boat and they’d frantically be whipping their heads from side to

Len Testa: Are we missing something?

Jim Hill: Yeah, I mean it’s like where is the thing that we’re supposed to be seeing? And it’s like well, there is no thing. So it’s just a boat ride.

Len Testa: we’re at the end of the sort of the retail area on Discover Island. We’ve come to a junction now where to our left is the entrance to it’s tough to be a bug. To the right is Dino Land USA.

Len Testa: I actually like the retail area here quite a bit. It’s unassuming. And they’ve got some really cranking AC, which I think are really the two things I look for in a Disney movie.

Jim Hill: But at the same time, the wood carving, they actually bought in upwards of 60 wood carvers who all they did were create these wonderful art pieces that are used to decorate the columns and that sort of thing.

Len Testa: So I heard something interesting and I don’t know if it’s true. We’ll walk to the park and we’ll see if it is. That the carvings on the, on the retail establishments are all herbivores and the carvings on the restaurants are carnivores.

Jim Hill: I had heard that.

Len Testa: It’s that kind of detail that I love. We’ll walk over to Flame Tree and see if it’s true. I’m looking at an owl. We could be there. That’s right.

Jim Hill: But anyway, just off to our left here is… It’s tough to be a bug. And… Here’s the thing. What do do for… So eventually when it’s tough to be a bug ends its run, what are you going to put in there?

Jim Hill: They…

Len Testa: You’re not gonna go Space Invaders.

Jim Hill: No. No. And what’s interesting is that there were two iterations of the show ahead of them. There was literally a Mother Nature show where literally a willowy blonde was going to tell you about… In fact, they had started using a little bit of the artwork from Fantasia 2000.

Len Testa: From the… The Firebird Suite. then Tissue 2000 being a movie no one saw about music no one listens to. Well there you go. Okay. I remember there were five of us in the theater. Anyway, yeah, I’m looking at herbivores. Okay. Yeah, so on Flame Tree there’s an alligator, an owl, a crocodile, an owl. It’s definitely all carnivores. That’s scary.

Jim Hill: Okay. Next, they were working on a Lion King show. It was Rafiki talking to Simba and Nala.

Len Testa: Oh, that would make sense.

Jim Hill: And it’s like around Lion King 12 is that when that’s gonna but this is where it interesting is it that

Jim Hill: anybody who worked with Michael Eisner back in the day always feared the meeting where things would change because Michael had the attention span of a hummingbird all right and just sort of you know he’d come into work and he would have seen something and it’s like you know hey we should do horses.

Len Testa: Horses.

Jim Hill: You know and.

Len Testa: It’s gonna be big.

Jim Hill: And Michael evidently came from you know and they were literally they had boarded they were getting work on the Lion King version I think Robert Guillaume actually had already come and recorded a temporary track and you know Michael’s like looking at early you know rough stuff on it’s a bugs life and it’s like bugs live in trees we should do that we should do bugs and it’s like really okay because now the guys from Pixar it’s like we understand we’re still making the movie and we don’t have the people to spare to make your movie. So that’s the…

Len Testa: You want us to make a movie while we’re making your movie.

Jim Hill: That’s right. Okay. So they actually…

Len Testa: could possibly go wrong with that?

Jim Hill: They farmed it out to Rhythm and Hues.

Len Testa: that’s right, that’s right. Yeah.

Jim Hill: So… Anyway, now…

Len Testa: Now we’re entering… So we’re entering Dino Land and the interesting thing about Dino Land is again, there two paths, right? You can go off to the left to Theater in the Wild and then you can go off to the right and go underneath the Sioux, the giant that…

Jim Hill: No, sorry, this is the Brontosaurus. Sue is in dinosaur.

Len Testa: But you’re going underneath the bridge, you get the boneyard on your left, you’ve got retail, restaurants on your right.

Len Testa: But again, so you see this repetition of a pattern where to get where you want to go on a land, you could go two ways. And again, coming up here, right? once we’ve gone past that fork in the road, we come to another fork in the road. You can go left to Dinorama. You can go right to Dinosaur. We’ll go right to Dinosaur.

Jim Hill: And again, this is another park that from what, and again, I can tell you, fact, I, it’d be fun to put in the show notes. Let me see if I can chase down the actual transcript of the original presentation of the park.

Len Testa: Oh, that’d be hysterical. Let’s take a look. Is there a giant crocodile here still? Let’s see.

Len Testa: vacation usually this pool is filled with no there he is he’s he’s underneath the the shade he’s hot as well they are cold-blooded anyway this is we’re passing a dino bite snacks we’ve got restoranosaurus

Jim Hill: They worked so hard on the theming for this. mean the whole-

Len Testa: Restaurant Osoris is actually really well themed. It’s- layout inside is a little confusing.

Jim Hill: No, I just- it’s- you’re supposed to get the sense that this was a dinosaur dig that just sort of built out. And again, you when you look at, for example, the detailing up here, these are supposedly where the people who working on the dig, you know, during the day, this is where they hang out at night. And you can see like their cocaine pyramid and all that.

Len Testa: So we’re looking at- we’re looking at Restaurant Osoris and on the roof of Restaurant Osoris are a couple of lawn chairs, with a small cooler that is suspended. So it looks like two kids from college are able to put seats on the roof of their building to look out over the park. really, it’s actually a good effect. Is it an Airstream trailer as well?

Jim Hill: That’s it exactly. Nice. But again, what was supposed to, the component that’s missing here, in fact, the very thing you were supposed to see when you pulled into the parking lot to the back of Dino Land USA, was going to be the excavator. was this, you know, the idea is that…

Len Testa: The excavator.

Jim Hill: Literally, it’s a roller coaster.

Jim Hill: The gimmick is that the backstory on this is that this was a sand and rock quarry they had been digging. They discovered the fossil. So there’s a backstory.

Len Testa: Right. OK.

Jim Hill: So they had to stop. And so this is what compelled the archaeologists to come here and work. So it’s a dig site in the site of like a giant sandpit that already has all of this heavy duty track work and all that. And it’s an old fashioned wooden roller coaster.

Len Testa: sense as a story yeah you can actually fit Dinarama into that too if it’s a giant construction site for a road it could actually work together actually that’s kind of funny because then then Dinarama would sort of kind of make sense whereas now it’s just bad

Jim Hill: well see it just came down to the fact that they were looking at they could spend

Len Testa: $120 million dollars. We’ve got a great $120 million dollar project for you. You got 15 and a half.

Jim Hill: Well, actually, you know, that’s the interesting thing about…

Len Testa: Boy. We’re walking by a dinosaur right now. We’re at the T-Rex Sioux station.

Jim Hill: But you ended up, at least in that case, it was like you could spend $120 million dollars on one ride, over 120 million dollars you could have multiple rides and expand Dynorama and that’s what they did it was more a thought about capacity

Len Testa: yes they spent the money on capacity rather than on the one good ride

Jim Hill: that’s it that’s it but they’re doing the exact opposite there’s actually with the exact opposite way that universal did with potter potter went with one you know one really good ride one mediocre ride and

Len Testa: And you know, it’s made all the difference now in the case of dinosaur.

Jim Hill: Well, thing is, you know, it’s a question of we don’t have enough money to do it right, but we have enough money to do it over later. That’s the that was what they were betting.

Len Testa: So we’re up at the now, Matt Hochberg’s favorite ride. And the thing that I love most about dinosaur is Felicia Rashad from the 80s in the if you ever want to know what the Cosby show looked like, all you have to do is come back here. You don’t have to go watch TBS. For me, it cuts down on my cable bill.

Jim Hill: All right. And again, I can tell you this because again, I have the I saw the art. This wasn’t the ride we were supposed to have.

Len Testa: The what? I’m shocked. Shocked, Jim Hill.

Jim Hill: The ride we were supposed to have was at this ingenious marriage of the Star Tours…

Len Testa: Simulator?

Jim Hill: Yeah. But it had a movement component. In fact, they’re…

Jim Hill: you were supposed to be in a vehicle attract vehicle like a like a bulldozer and again you were sent into this environment sixty seconds before you’re supposed to retrieve a specimen wasn’t a question about which is going to go back and it was going to be like the jungle crews as in you would turn corners and it would be a question of its dark out it’s like it’s it’s in that moment before the sun goes down so it’s full twilight scenes and they had for example the

Jim Hill: That wonderful moment in the jungle was returned and it’s the veld and you have all of those things. They did that with dinosaurs. fact, I…

Len Testa: like a sweeping panorama?

Jim Hill: And you’re looking out at, you know, 30, 40, 50 different species interacting. And again, they took this idea from the art, from the actual dinosaur movie. And in fact, one of my favorite pieces out of…

Jim Hill: my Desiana collection is a friend who worked on this when they pulled the sequence out of the movie, one day a box shows up at the house and it’s this beautifully little sculpted log with this beautifully little sculpted dinosaur with a tiny little fur on it. He literally pulled it out of the one inch to one foot model of the attraction. It’s like I want this to go to somebody who will appreciate it as opposed to when I throw everything out in the dumpster. no, it was, but again, it was just one of these things where as the back of the house began

Jim Hill: consuming you know what they had to and again real is that you cannot shortchange you know animal you know keeping the public away from animals keeping the animals away from the public they had a choice right it’s it’s it’s substandard animal enclosures or you know cutting

Len Testa: cutting budgets on animal enclosures or cutting budgets on rides. People wouldn’t tolerate the animal abuse though. I you could tolerate DinoRama a lot more than you could tolerate ill-treated elephants.

Jim Hill: That’s it, exactly. So the borders of this just crept in and it just then became, okay, it’s at night. Okay, now it’s really at night.

Len Testa: To save on lighting.

Jim Hill: Exactly.

Len Testa: The other thing I like about Dinosaur is you notice the plant changes to ferns because ferns are supposed to be more representative of the Cretaceous period.

Jim Hill: So again, they’ve kind of hit that. They’re trying.

Len Testa: They’re trying. that’s what I enjoy about Disney, the notion that they will in fact revisit an attraction and try to tweak. In this case, I don’t think a planter counts as a tweak. Well, the thing that I understand about the planter is, mean, normally water is used to convey dynamism, right, to make things dynamic. But then, so they’ve got this water feature, smacked up in the middle of the entrance to the park, to the attraction. But then they cover it with ferns that are six feet tall, so no one I don’t know where they’re going with that. Well… Let’s go this way. We’ll walk this way through Dinorama. This is one of my favorite paths through the Animal Kingdom. It’s one of the things I like about the park. We talked about multiple ways to get through places. The exit to Dinosaur is actually a very nice walking path over to Dinorama. Have you been this way?

Jim Hill: It’s been a while. To quote Bill Murray, sure there are lots of ways I’ve gone that you haven’t, ma’am.

Len Testa: Stripes, the greatest movie of all time. Absolutely. It’s beginning of that movie.

Jim Hill: Army training!

Len Testa: Alright, we’re walking out of the retail area, we’re walking back towards the exit to the dinosaur. Again, it’s shaded. This is sort of like a contemporary Cretaceous, so it’s kind of like Tomorrowland meets, well, Sandstone really, but it’s an interesting sort of place. It’s not bad. I like the way they executed it.

Len Testa: It’s the chunky sort of triangular and square shaped rocks. They’ve got water fountains. And again, notice the more ferns here and actually less bamboo than in other places.

Jim Hill: No, it definitely nails home the idea. But anyway, back in the day when this first opened, the whole notion of… I’m blanking the name of the couple.

Len Testa: Laverne, surely.

Jim Hill: Chester and Hester.

Len Testa: Chester and Hester.

Jim Hill: The idea was that Chester and Hester, this was opportunistic. They had found out about the dinosaur dig. So they took their establishment, which was at the edge of the dig, and just tried to turn it into a tourist trap.

Len Testa: Is that the backstory?

Jim Hill: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Len Testa: You summarized in two sentences something I actually never understood. That’s beautiful.

Jim Hill: But then to decide, okay, well they really went nuts and built a carnival.

Len Testa: Okay. You know. Alright, if you say so. It’s not what Stucky’s would have done, Jim.

Jim Hill: No, no. That’s tasteful kind people.

Len Testa: Well, I was thinking more about the lack of pecan log rolls, but your thing works too. How about taste? So, alright. So we’re walking through the Chester and Hester retailer right now. A little bit crowded, but the bonus here is the air conditioning, I think.

Jim Hill: Yes, yes.

Len Testa: We’ll walk straight out. This is the park for you. Really value the air conditioning opportunity.

Len Testa: Alright, so we’re walking through lots of dinosaur models, of retail stuff, and a little bit of noise, a little bit of noise from the kids. So we come out of the retail and we immediately see the sign for Chester and Estra’s Dinarama. We’ve got Primeval Whirl to your right, we’ve got Tristar Top Spin to your left, and a giant yellow dinosaur straight ahead of us. And as somebody who actually…

Jim Hill: The number of times I drove back and forth to Florida and didn’t stop at South of the border and long to… am I missing? What am I missing? Every single time. When I finally stopped and actually went to the top of the San Perro, it was greatly disappointing.

Len Testa: You’ve done it now. You’ve checked it off the box.

Jim Hill: But this is that. I mean, they’ve done a wonderful job, but it’s it’s kind of funny.

Jim Hill: Frank Oz, Disney actually had a meeting with Frank Oz about having him actually come back and direct the new Muppet movie. But at this point, were doing, the movie they were doing was the cheapest Muppet movie ever made. The gimmick was that Gonzo had spent all the money on the credit sequence. they had to shoot the film gorilla style. And Frank, who hadn’t actually been working with the Muppets since like 90, 91, loved this idea. So he said, give me the script, go home.

Jim Hill: So he has this meeting with Dick Cook and he comes in the door and he says, okay, all right, to shoot this movie, I think we’re gonna need to spend like $30 million. And Dick Cook kind of blanches and is like, well, what are you thinking, more like 10 or 15? And says, do you realize how much money you have to spend to make something look cheap? And that’s actually, I tell that story from here. That’s the theme of this.

Jim Hill: You know, I mean, this is $120 million worth of ride shows and attractions. That, you know, you have to, in fact, we’re about to walk by the Orange Dinosaur that because it’s not a Florida-friendly color, you know, you have to spend all of this time, you know, painting just to maintain. So a faded, you know, actually works for a roots. It’s a faded yellow. It’s a, you know, if Ralph Lauren actually could come up with that color for walls, he’d be richer than he is now.

Len Testa: I think that’s amazing.

Len Testa: So the background noise you hear is kids playing Whack-a-Mole. But it’s Whack-a-Pack-ea-a-a-a-

Len Testa: You gotta figure, you’re working in Animal Kingdom, right? You walk in on a Tuesday, you punch your time card, they give you your assignment for the day, it’s this primeval world. That’s a message for management, isn’t it Jim?

Jim Hill: you and this is, know, just…

Jim Hill: Right now it’s literally in the hand of the magic eight ball that the Disney lawyers have. That they let it reopen, but they are really not happy. I heard literally as early as the weekend before it opened, were cast members that were working there who were told it may never open again. It kind of sort of reopened on a Monday, I think because Disney had actually told the Sentinel that it had opened the previous Friday and it didn’t. But as of that weekend, were cast members being told that it was officially or unofficially.

Jim Hill: but that it would never open again. It’s still out. And again, that’s another thing that’s fascinating about Disney.

Len Testa: It’s an off-the-shelf ride though. That’s thing I can’t figure out. And the cast members were actually in an unauthorized area, right?

Jim Hill: They were. They were. But the concern is, it happens once it’s an accident. It happens twice. It’s bad design. And so it’s like, all right, and can we fix this? And the reality is…

Jim Hill: For what we’d spend to fix it, could put it into attraction that wouldn’t kill people. that’s kind of where we are right now.

Len Testa: So we’re walking, we’ve left the Dynorama part of Dynaland. We’re coming up on the Finding Nemo show building, which by the way is huge.

Jim Hill: yep, mother is…

Len Testa: And it’s extremely popular, right? It continues on, in fact I was… and a steel band, a steel drum band. I love a steel drum band. I do.

Jim Hill: This one is here for a while. Bobby Lopez and his wife Kirsten Anderson did the score and did a wonderful job.

Len Testa: Which I can know about Nimo, right? And, do you remember the first show in here? Did you see that? Tarzan.

Jim Hill: Tarzan? No, Jungle Book.

Len Testa: No, I missed Jungle Book, no.

Jim Hill: It was literally, it was Disney Jungle Book meets Cirque du Soleil.

Len Testa: Really?

Jim Hill: They had a stage that was made out of a trampoline.

Len Testa: Like Festival of Lion King does?

Jim Hill: But what was cool about it was that they had, you know, people in jungle book costumes had been designed specifically for the show that had lots of yarn and fake fur and they’d throw themselves on the trampoline and they’d leap on it. So it was like this really active show that was very entertaining for five minutes.

Jim Hill: Went on for 45, but you know, just…

Len Testa: That’s my whole thing with, I mean, my thing with Cirque du Soleil. It’s fabulously talented, very bendy people jumping around. I can take that for maybe five minutes, the length of one music video, and then after that it’s like just different ways that you can contort yourself. I get it, you’re flexible. You probably make some people very, very happy. It’s just not for me.

Jim Hill: Well…

Len Testa: Good night everybody. I so. I think so. we’re walking past Nemo. Nemo is actually, the other interesting thing I think about the Nemo show is that it bucks the trend that you see in Disney shows being seven and a half minutes long. This thing’s a good half an hour, right?

Jim Hill: Absolutely. Actually closer to 45.

Len Testa: 45, that’s right. Yeah, we need to talk about that. And it works. mean, people like it. They’ll line up at the door.

Jim Hill: Actually, it works so well. Disney Theatrical has been by here a couple of times to kick the tires that

Jim Hill: You just it’s like…

Len Testa: an imitating on the road?

Jim Hill: Yeah, I mean it’s it’s one of these things where it’s it’s it’s solid you know in fact everyone just sort of like you musicalize that and it works. What? So you know it just but in the end it’s just sort of like how do you take something out of a theme park and put it in a theater that the belief now is that at some point they will close down the show, wait a few years and then expand it out to a full-blown theater piece.

Jim Hill: The good news is they’ve got the properties, they can go out and essentially musicalize pretty much anything. They’ve got a lot of stuff to work with and the theater space is huge.

Len Testa: So we’re crossing over the bridge now from Dino Land into Asia and in the background you can hear the screams of tourists who are getting their bills for their t-shirt- no, it’s Expedition Everest. the background. And again, notice the plants have changed. We’ve got the prayer flags.

Len Testa: up we’ve got strung from trees but you notice there’s a there’s very little if any I can see any bamboo actually and lack of ferns as well.

Jim Hill: No horticulturally this is is an incredibly sophisticated theme park you know and but again that kind of brings us to the interesting thing about expert genevers it’s like you know this is an attraction right now that is running without the Yeti working. The Yeti has the Yeti’s broken down more than

Len Testa: Well, Paris Hilton. yeah, it’s amazing. The thing never works. They’ve tried different effects, right? They’ve tried strobe lights on it to make it look like it’s moving. They’ve tried darkening the,

Jim Hill: It’s essentially it’s like this is they’ve tried every trick that you would do if you’re if you’re trying to get your ugly sister a date right you you dim the lights you You you try different sort of settings everything but a double scotch I think and they’ve they’ve tried giving to guests to make it make it look more realistic

Len Testa: Sorry, I’m still kind of fixating on my sister being a Yeti

Jim Hill: Jim’s often a far away look about it. would explain the hairy lip Anyway, no, but here’s the thing with this major broken effect which again which was the driver I mean if you remember the

Jim Hill: publicity. the publicity was like my god it’s the most advanced jetty we’ve ever had it’s amazing it’s amazing you see for two seconds and now it’s even broken. But now I mean look at we are looking at this you know it’s what a fast pass return time at two o’clock you know it’s what one something like that yeah this is not impacting

Len Testa: No it’s not, people started going on the ride. The Yeti actually, for all it’s build up, the Yeti wasn’t the major draw for this attraction. It really is the fact that it’s the park’s only roller coaster.

Jim Hill: And that, is the takeaway to Disney management. It’s like, it hasn’t impacted attendance.

Jim Hill: Why should I fix something that literally, you know…

Len Testa: I could spend the money and get exactly the same result as if I did nothing.

Jim Hill: No, that’s exactly. So that’s where we are right now. And I know for all of the noise about the Disco Yeti and you know that they…

Len Testa: Nobody cares.

Jim Hill: Yeah, I mean nobody… It’s… the guests aren’t voting with their pocketbooks or their feet.

Len Testa: And that’s Or maybe they are actually. They’re just voting the way that some people don’t like. But yeah, it’s true. mean…

Len Testa: To me, I also go on it, the effect doesn’t really… I I like to complain about it that it doesn’t work, but in the end it’s six to one, half a dozen, it doesn’t really matter.

Jim Hill: Absolutely, absolutely. But the flip side of this though, is that because… The one thing that the expedition efforts didn’t do, and they now realize it was a mistake of placement, is that this was supposed to help this park. mean, if we’ve got restaurant complexes, we’ve got everything.

Jim Hill: But this was supposed to help this park bump out its operating hours to 7-8, you know, 9 o’clock at night.

Len Testa: Every night?

Jim Hill: That was initially the hope and the plan and you know, they saw the attendance jump. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Yeah, went up a couple percent when they opened Everest.

Len Testa: And they do have the Yakin Yeti sit-down, which as far as sit-downs go, generally speaking, not bad.

Jim Hill: But the hard reality is because it’s so deep into the park.

Jim Hill: They can’t keep it open until eight. This isn’t enough to keep, you know, to make this into a real full day or rather a day and night part. So today when we’re in here recording, this park closes hard at five o’clock. And you know, when you think about it Epcot, they’re just…

Len Testa: Five o’clock is the beginning of the second phase of Epcot.

Jim Hill: Exactly. Epcot actually has two days. mean, Epcot’s got its future World Day and then it’s got its World Circuit Day. So which we’ll touch on as we get to Avatar. That’s one of the reasons.

Len Testa: After what?

Jim Hill: You know, we get back to that side of the park. We’ll talk about that.

Len Testa: right. right. We’re walking past the drink carts. By the way, I love the decor of the drink carts. Really, really well decorated.

Jim Hill: know, Rody insisted. They came back with so much visual reference and it all paid off. In fact, I remember walking through here before Everest was even open and it was so beautifully detailed, so inhabited that world. It’s like, this is going to be great.

Len Testa: They’ve got the different lighting effects. The thing that they’ve done here is they’ve established a ceiling in Asia that you rarely see in other areas. like, when we talk about ceiling, there’s things above your head. that aren’t typically found in other lands in the park. So we start off with the prayer flags back when you cross the bridge coming from Dino Land and then you, in this part of the park, you’ve got small light bulbs, exposed light bulbs, and then farther on you’ve got more formal light bulbs and then you’ve got more different kinds of lighting. And then you’ve got even farther beyond we can see sort of the monkey cages.

Jim Hill: But at the same time, mean, see, they anticipated that they’d have a nighttime.

Len Testa: The fact that there are lights means that they anticipated that, yeah. Because it’s not dark at five o’clock in September in Florida.

Jim Hill: spent this on theming you can’t use. again…

Len Testa: The only times I’m really here at night is when during when it’s dark is during Christmas when it gets dark at five o’clock anyway and the park’s open for evening extra magic cars.

Len Testa: Not that it’s open for evening extra magic hours anymore, but you get the idea.

Jim Hill: But that is the hard reality of basing a theme park on animals. When they’re getting up at dawn and the sun’s going down and they go sleepy by, it’s just like, the entire back half of the park, you don’t see anything.

Len Testa: And apparently you can’t drug the animals to get them to perform on a regular 8 to 5 schedule.

Jim Hill: Come here Simba, have your expresso.

Len Testa: So we’re looking at the monkey cages now and there are actually monkeys out and active. Oh, he’s moving, one of those things moves pretty fast. That’s the first time I’ve actually seen a monkey do that. It’s swinging from bamboo pole to bamboo pole, almost like you see in the Tarzan movies. It’s amazing how realistic the monkey has learned Tarzan’s moves.

Jim Hill: It’s all those years that study at Juilliard. That’s where that tuition went.

Len Testa: It’s fascinating. The other thing I think that’s amazing here is that we’ve essentially walked from the exit to Everest all the way through to the path where we turn right to go to Collier River Rapids. And there’s a remarkable lack of merchandise. They could have merch-merched the heck out of this whole thing and they didn’t.

Jim Hill: Well, the problem is on the left hand side of the path you’ve got the river and on the right hand side you’ve got animal habitat so they were kind of constrained by that but I think that’s more of a good thing. Well the other thing, in fact, if you look down, which again makes it counterintuitive because there are flying monkeys through the air, but you’ve got all of these ground treatments where the idea is you’re supposed to get the sense of this is real. I mean you’ve got tracks of motorbikes, you’ve got animal tracks, that sort of thing.

Jim Hill: And one of the things that the retail people came through, when Joe was explaining this thing to us, look, you know, if people trip and fall on your wonderful themed pavement, you know, because they’ve turned their head and looked at a merchandise rack, you’re gonna sue our ass. You’re gonna have to pull back a little bit. So you’re not gonna put racks and racks of merch out.

Len Testa: Let’s walk down towards Colley River Rapids.

Len Testa: So again, it’s late September. It’s literally like September 30th we’re recording this. It’s about 92 or 93 degrees in Orlando. The merchandise that is out tend to be those spray bottle fans that are battery operated and flip-flops. So if you guys are listening to this, it’s November and it’s December. It’s cold and rainy where you’re at. Just keep in mind that it’s hot as hell here right now and Jim and I are walking around a theme park in shorts. So hopefully that’ll get you through the long winter.

Len Testa: We’re coming up on Collier River Rapids here, which I actually like this quite a bit, except for the gratuitous water treatment at the end. Let’s walk over towards the entrance. Okay. And again. And they’re not running FastPass today, which is odd because it’s 92 degrees. Well… They’re covering the FastPass now, so it must have just ended distribution.

Jim Hill: Well, why this is… What I love about this track, and again, this comes off of having seen the original presentation, is that…

Jim Hill: You were supposed to… the conservation message, obviously in this thing between the… you know, they’ve torn up the forest and we’re going through the rapids because, you know, bad man tearing up land and all that. But we missed the real payoff. The real payoff was you were supposed to be in your raft and actually float through the tiger enclosure.

Len Testa: Really? through the Maharaja jungle track?

Jim Hill: Yeah.

Jim Hill: But it was one of these things where the Imagineers presented it to the large cat people and it’s like, you understand the tigers like water?

Jim Hill: We hadn’t realized that too many years of watching cartoons had skewed our vision of what what tigers could do So it wasn’t one of these issues where it’s like well the water will prevent the tiger the water will be a fine barrier between the tigers and the guests so Sadly that story element had to go by the wayside

Len Testa: and so now they couldn’t find hydrophobic Tigers They don’t work for scale. That’s the problem. Nope then. see the one It’s kind funny that you mentioned that because we’re standing at the bridge which is to the

Len Testa: left of the entrance to Tocalli and by God it’s wide enough for raft. This is, it would have gone right past where we’re at. So if you guys are listening to this at home, to the left of the entrance to Tocalli River Rapids is a temple again with bamboo around it I guess for monkeys to swing but if you look at it there’s a sort of a horseshoe shaped water path around it and to Jim’s point it’s exactly wide enough to fit.

Len Testa: one of the Colley River Rapids rafts. would have really gone.

Len Testa: right through the Maharaja Jungle Track. This is amazing.

Jim Hill: And again, you know, the giveaway is if you look, this is redundant design from the other monkey. I mean, it’s literally it’s a placeholder that was dropped in because, geez, we can’t put the tiger out there. it’s kind of, know, but again, that’s anybody who works in theme park design will tell you that there are things you put on the table that you have to take off or it’s like, I don’t think people enjoy having steel spikes burrowed into their foreheads. But that was the climax of the ride.

Len Testa: What’s up with Collier River Rapids? mean it doesn’t do well in the winter, right? Any plans to change it?

Jim Hill: This attraction is wrapped in here. It’s the way it’s situated to the animal enclosure areas. They can’t shut it down. In fact, what’s going to be kind of interesting, and again we’ll get the vendor eventually, but…

Jim Hill: You know, this is a park that you can’t change easily. You can’t finesse. When you think of all of the back of the house issues, have animal barns and safe places for customers to move back and forth between the animal barns. The ride expansion areas are basically all to the front.

Jim Hill: And once you pour that much steel and concrete into making something like a raft ride.

Len Testa: You’re not going to move it 16 feet to the left.

Jim Hill: No. And that’s where we are now. If anything, right now, the future plans for Animal Kingdom are fixed in the front of the park mostly because, again, as all the animals in the back go sleepy by, you can keep the tourists in the front.

Len Testa: So stuff up towards the entrance.

Jim Hill: Yes.

Len Testa: Another thing I really like about the Inla Kingdom, they serve beer. Which, not that I drink the beer, but it’s just the idea that you can get a drink if you wanted to.

Jim Hill: Well, again, you gotta make this adult friendly if you can.

Len Testa: So we’re walking up on the Maha Raja Jungle Trek right now, which actually, I like both of the jungle treks and it’s one of those things that I’ll go on almost every time I’m in the park if I’ve got nothing to do because it’s not a ride, but… the environment that they’ve created there is so good that it’s entertaining to walk through just for the atmosphere itself.

Jim Hill: no no no, absolutely. And coupled with the fact that you are in fact looking at real animals doing as realistic behaviors as animals can do in a zoo. You know, mean, on that level…

Jim Hill: Disney’s Animal Kingdom works. If this or Pangani Falls, mean, you know, but at the same time, it’s just when you see that you have to create this space where thousands of people can move through this space successfully, and it has to be ADA accessible, and everybody has to have a viewpoint, and you also have to have visual language that compels you to move forward so you don’t spend all day with your face pressed against the tiger cage. You know, it’s…

Jim Hill: This park doesn’t really get the credit sometimes that it’s due because of the design and how successful it is. The Disney fan community tends to focus on, know, where’s the next ride?

Len Testa: For what it does, I think some of it, we’ll talk about when we get to the character trails too around Discovery Island, some of it’s absolutely fantastic.

Jim Hill: Absolutely. It’s things that you won’t find in any other theme park. By that I mean, even when the park is completely full, like we were here during New Year’s, there were times when

Jim Hill: there would be literally no other people on certain part of the animal tracks. But at the time, now look at the area we are now. up by the entrance of Baja Raja. People aren’t moving with the same speed and urgency that you’ll catch at any other theme

Len Testa: No, no, They’re not doing the main street march, right?

Jim Hill: Yeah. I mean, there’s almost a hesitancy because it’s like the visual language is kind of confusing. It’s like, where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do?

Len Testa: Well, it’s definitely slower too. mean, the fact that you’ve got trees, you’ve got so much nature, you’ve got water, you’ve got…

Len Testa: They’ve actually got a little bit more retail. You’ve got a couple of retail stands. You’ve got a couple of drink carts. You’ve got some beer. You’ve got a water fountain, play water fountain coming up. There are small things to look at.

Len Testa: as well as the visual design is different. The other thing too is you can’t actually see where you’re going. I you and I are standing essentially in the middle of the path. We can’t see the water from here. We’re so far back there.

Jim Hill: absolutely. But at the same time, again, not to dwell on the paving treatment, but it’s always this classic case of the imaginers build a park and then Ops has to figure out how has to run it, exactly. And Ops really doesn’t care for theme pavement because…

Len Testa: A. It’s hard to maintain. B. People in wheelchairs have tough times. can’t push carts on it. You can’t get merch around.

Jim Hill: That’s it exactly.

Len Testa: Have you ever tried running on this by the way?

Jim Hill: No.

Len Testa: So it’s actually pretty tricky to run on. But one of the interesting stories we have is… We can look. One of the interesting stories we have is when we were doing data collection for the animal kingdom, we had researchers who would do nothing but walk around the park all day.

Len Testa: And invariably, what we learned after time is invariably, the people who worked at the Animal Kingdom on a Monday had to have Tuesday off because the uneven pavement wreaked such havoc with your knees and ankles and feet over the period of 12 hours that you’re in the park that it was so much more painful than walking through Epcot with its flat pavement or the Magic Kingdom, even with its elevated curbs. It was so much more work.

Len Testa: to do this. mean, think about how you’re balancing yourself as you’re going through this and even pavement. Imagine doing that, you know, literally doing nothing but walking 20, 25 miles on this. It was so much more work for the the data collectors that we had to give them the next day off to recover.

Jim Hill: But again, you know, this is, you know, authenticity comes at a price, you know, and, you know, again, that’s one of the reasons why this part is so expensive to maintain and so expensive when you’re looking to put new things in because it’s just sort of like…

Len Testa: It’s like why distressed jeans cost so much money. like what? There we go. These are $40 jeans but when you distress them they’re $120 because that takes work.

Len Testa: We’re coming up, we’re bearing to the right here, we’re leaving… the Kali River Rapids area of Asia and we’re walking up towards the Yak and Yeti market, the quick service. Have you eaten at the quick service?

Jim Hill: we’ve done the restaurant but not the quick service.

Len Testa: the quick service. So the interesting thing about the quick service is really just okay. There’s, I think they’ve got what, like half a dozen different menu items on it. The one thing that we’ve learned from this is that the only thing that works really is the honey chicken because everything else, essentially sitting under heat lamps and Chinese food doesn’t.

Len Testa: sit well under heat lamps. The only thing that works really is the honey chicken because it’s crispy. It doesn’t quite get as crusty as this. And then we’re coming up on the…

Len Testa: the Yakin Yidi sit down which I really like actually. it’s a two story which is sort of rare for Disney restaurants there aren’t that many of them compared to the one stories. It’s got lovely theming, it’s got great visuals too actually from an entrance perspective. It’s very good. Now this is interesting though, this is the thing that you had mentioned this in Tomorrowland. If you’re walking from Discovery Island and you make a left onto, sorry you make a right onto Asia and you’re walking towards Everest.

Len Testa: The entrance to Yakin Yedi is almost at a 270 degree angle from your field of vision. If you’re walking straight ahead, like in the morning, you’re coming from the bridge, you’re walking towards Everest, unless you’re really looking for that Yakin Yedi sign, you’re not going to see it. It’s exactly the same problem that you mentioned in Monster’s Laugh Floor in Tomorrowland.

Jim Hill: as I understand it, the amount of, know, the grumbling from the people Yakin Yedi, they are paying for that. That, you know, they don’t get the sort of foot traffic. They don’t get the spontaneous diner experience. but the same time, are you going to tear out this wonderful, know, this pseudo-authentic heap of a statue and the tree with the prayer cloths? To put in a neon sign that says, here. I mean, this…

Jim Hill: This is an issue that continually bites his park in the hands.

Len Testa: they could have a little bit differently. I’m not saying that it’s an either or. There could have been a compromise in the middle.

Jim Hill: The weird thing is, and now that we live in this age of computer modeling and all that, that it’s to a lesser extent, they can actually visit the sites of things. Disney’s only been doing this since 1955. It’s only 50 years. At some point, they yeah, maybe we shouldn’t position it there.

Len Testa: You think they would have learned after Tomorrowland, but I kind of get how something like that could be missed. That’s something where you’re under a certain amount of time constraint, you’re under a certain amount of budget constraint, and then you need to get it in. I can kind of see that. It’s just to me, it’s like anybody who’s been to Tomorrowland could have seen that that might have been a problem, and it’s a wasted opportunity. By the way, we’re passing Flights of Wonder. It’s an entertaining show, and I’m surprised it’s actually lasted this long, given the…

Len Testa: Given that it’s a I’m surprised actually it’s lasted this long in its current form like they haven’t they haven’t changed it There was in fact it’s kind of interesting given that while we’re here. They’re actually doing play testing for the Wilderness Explorer

Jim Hill: That’s right the Kim possible at bullshit.

Len Testa: It’s adventure, but for animal kingdom

Jim Hill: Well, they had, you know, and of course that’s kicking off of the Russell character from up, but they had actually taken the giant bird, Kevin, from, and they were going to have Kevin and Doug actually heavily featured in a redo of the bird show here. And for some reason that’s off the table right now, which is kind of intriguing that here they are doing the Explorer Kevin stuff. But again, it’s Disney. They may circle around to this idea yet again.

Len Testa: Yeah. I mean, I just, good ideas never die right they just sit on a shelf until the next generation comes in and says this is brilliant and I’m putting my name on it and pretending I’m calling it mine so we’re walking let’s walk up to the the right here this is one of the things I like so we’re on the walkway between Asia and Africa and one of the great things about about the animal kingdom is the fact that you’ve got these alternate paths to go places in this instance there’s the main walkway

Len Testa: near the closer to the water, literally every single person we can see is on. Now it’s a Jim and I are literally walking by ourselves on this path. There’s a there used to be we’re coming up on the little gazebo area that used to be a smoking area. And the funny thing is, again, it’s probably 20, 30 thousand people in this 20,000 people in the park today. Fifteen thousand people. There’s literally not another person on the path that we’re on right now. It’s completely shaded. It’s a lot cooler than the main path.

Len Testa: We’ve got running water. It’s a beautiful scene and we’re the only ones on it. Jim, if this was nighttime, it’d be more romantic.

Jim Hill: Oh, man. I love the running water.

Len Testa: Oh, look at Duck. It looks so real. Oh, a family of them. And they were sleeping. So sorry about that. As you were. you were. The waterfall here is a great effect as well. It’s got audio. It’s got visual. And if you notice, you can smell sort of the oxidation of the water there, right?

Len Testa: That’s really good. And the lighting too fits in really well. I think they actually reused these lamps at the wilderness lodge. But it works. It works in the animal kingdom. Just like the adventure land the background music works in Dino Land. It’s so startling.

Jim Hill: Again, Rhody insisted on these sorts of things.

Len Testa: Of course, now we see why we’re the only ones in this path. Oh, there’s a small character greeting.

Jim Hill: Yeah, but again, people can get around it and they just don’t. This is character from…

Len Testa: It’s Turk.

Jim Hill: from Tarzan, also my prom date.

Len Testa: Nice.

Jim Hill: Nice to hear that she finally found some career that made use of her back here. Good for her. I always wondered what happened.

Len Testa: I thought that’s what Facebook was for, but okay. So we’re coming up on Africa now. We’re leaving the path. We’re coming into Africa. We’ve got the Musaki drums up on the left where you can channel your inner Tito Puente.

Jim Hill: That’s That’s the obligatory Tito Puente joke for the podcast right there.

Len Testa: And then we’ve got a small dining area in the back. I’ve actually never sat there.

Jim Hill: There are so many great nooks and crannies to Hamurabi Village, but again, the problem is that people who come into this have come out of Adventureland at the Magic Kingdom and initially are kind of thrown because it has the authentic chaos of an African village.

Jim Hill: You know, the weird little signs that you’re supposed to notice about, you know, internet service.

Len Testa: Right, right, right. And the Mombasa marketplace, the hotel signage, right?

Len Testa: So, let’s see… So, coming up on Tusker House, which is going to be a character meal again. So, it was and then it wasn’t. By the way, I think Tusker House is underrated. This is one of the areas where the unofficial guide dining reviewer and I continually disagree. used to be about La Salle, now it’s about Tusker House. I think this is… So, it gets one and a half stars in the unofficial guide. I think it’s a two, two and a half star establishment. Now, you do know about Joe signing this place, right?

Jim Hill: No, no. He signed it.

Jim Hill: so Joe Rode apparently put his signature somewhere on the…

Len Testa: Oh, Jorodi Masks and Beads, that’s funny. So it’s J-O-R-O-D-I Masks and Beads. That’s funny, Jorodi. Is that his real phone number?

Jim Hill: Probably not.

Len Testa: yeah, if only there’s a way we could call him while we’re in the park. Hey, what’s the deal with this advertising? So it’s funny when they do… Yeah. So it’s funny, he… I see him like once every two years, and they always open up with the same line, hi, I’m Len Testa from The Unofficial Guide. Eventually he’ll figure it out. But, you know, I only see him once every two years.

Jim Hill: Probably not. And you probably see so many people too.

Len Testa: Alright, so we’re coming up, we’re up on Africa right now. We’ve got to our left the Kilimanjaro Safari’s entrance. To our right is the Panjani Forest and the Wild Life Express train area. And in the middle, this is actually a fairly thriving marketplace. You’ve got face painting, you’ve got, it says film, but it’s really bracelets and jewelry and stuff. there’s film. And then you’ve got fresh fruits, water.

Len Testa: Another thing is that you’ve got to… looks like they’re doing some sort of filming today.

Jim Hill: Interesting.

Len Testa: What’s going on with Kilmond, Joseph Rice?

Jim Hill: Well, again, we’re in a weird space where we have spent… the Disney company has spent so much money on infrastructure, on ride vehicles, on animal enclosures. They are trying, you know, after…

Jim Hill: Everyone knows all of the stories associated with Kilimanjaro. You know, the big red, little red, how that got dropped, the Poacher angle. Now…

Len Testa: That was a little stride in depth, the 20th and 30th time you’ve heard it.

Jim Hill: Well, that is the other issue. That they have found that by shoehorning the story elements, or bookending the ride, if you will, it actually hurt re-writability. That people just wanted to go and see the animals. You don’t actually need a story. You just let the animals be. But they are trying now to get

Jim Hill: that they’re reworking the lax sequence of the ride. And in fact, you know, that’s the other thing about what do we do now? Because we created this artificial river that we run up, or we created this space where we have, you know, this is the climax of our ride, but we have poured so much concrete, so much steel in the ground. And again, we have animal enclosures on either side of us. How do we put a new climax in this attraction? And they are, they’re on their fifth iteration at this point. They’re trying to figure out,

Jim Hill: You know, they’ve got a Witch Doctor Shaman storyline.

Len Testa: that’s interesting.

Jim Hill: Well, you the whole notion of you’re going out to see the animals and you introduce this character at beginning and you introduce them at the end. And, you know, did you learn anything? They’re… It’ll be interesting to see if they can actually do it. Because again, it’s so often with this perk they are handcuffed because…

Jim Hill: gonna just you can’t just like Mr. Lion if you could just sit here for about three days while we tear down your building and and put in a new effect would you be okay with that and no stop biting my leg you know will you go move the line and keep him company for a week while we while we completely transform this experience it’s not gonna work so you know so so that’s why again they’re concentrating on well what can we do to the front of the park and once people are coming and staying down there you can do things like you know but

Jim Hill: But this is the other reality. If you take down Kilimanjaro for six months to a year to do work on it, to retool it, you still have hundreds of animals out there that have to be fed, that have to be cared for.

Len Testa: I was going say fed and clothed, I think your direct description is better.

Jim Hill: And more to the point that when you shut the attraction down, you literally, once you bring it back up, they have to spend like a week to 10 days just running empty vehicles through.

Len Testa: To get the animals used to it again.

Jim Hill: Yeah, because otherwise it’s, what the hell, a truck.

Jim Hill: You know, mean, it just, there are operational issues with this park that none of the other parks deal with.

Len Testa: It’s the live animals.

Jim Hill: Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s both the draw of this park and the, unfortunately, but the monkey on its back.

Len Testa: the monkey on its back. That’s clever. Clever. All right. What about the Panjani Forest Exploration Trail? Same thing?

Jim Hill: They are looking to create more of a, in fact, for a time they were looking to try to push the Wilderness Explorer experience down into that area. believe it’s both…

Len Testa: the whole experience into that one area?

Jim Hill: Well, the notion of… So many people walk by Pangani without actually going down into it. And that’s part of the frustration.

Jim Hill: with ops for the spark is that you can’t see what’s down there. And you can put up all sorts of signs, but people just got off of a vehicle. In fact, the way this was originally built, were supposed to Pangani forest, being able to walk the trail there. That was your, you know, your reward for having saved the baby elephant.

Len Testa: was to walk through the forest.

Jim Hill: That’s exactly it. It’s like, you have been so good. We are sending you down into the forest. Now, nobody gets to do this. And You know, so it was a perk, but what they found for a lot of people is like, thank you, I don’t want the perk.

Len Testa: So some spontaneous drumming is just broken out in Africa as it is wanted to do.

Jim Hill: Yeah, I know every time I’m on the car at the continent, I can’t walk two blocks without a band breaking out the song.

Len Testa: All right, so we’re walking back. By the way, we’re passing the Dalwa bar, which normally I would say let’s stop off at the Dalwa bar for a drink, but too noisy right now. So we’re walking back over the bridge to Discovery Island. To our left is the Silhouette of Everest.

Len Testa: To our right is a bend in the river. It still looks pretty nice.

Jim Hill: This was, again, Discovery River. For example, You can see the boat landing to the left. But this was the area you actually came through that had… volcanic steam coming up out of the ground and so you get a fountain effect.

Len Testa: Oh, neat.

Jim Hill: But again, once people were like, what am I looking at? And then there was nothing. was nothing to look at. Steam! Steam! And that was it. whoo! Tomorrow!

Len Testa: So we’re over, we just left Asia, sorry, we just left Africa. We’re gonna make a left. We’re walking along the character trails. Again, this is part of my favorite part of the park here because no one ever goes here except for this one kid who is apparently lost.

Jim Hill: Watch out for the crocodiles,

Len Testa: Oh, storks, crocodiles, whatever it’s all the same. But there’s nobody here. It’s beautiful. Again, this is another example where the park’s fairly crowded today. There are people in the main walkways, but we’re on a path and there’s two other people. And that’s it. And you get to see lots of animals. So we’ve got storks here. We’ve got, I think coming up we’ve got parrots, right?

Jim Hill: Yep.

Len Testa: But you’re right. I the background music. It’s quiet. we’ve got a African. The African crested porcupine is out.

Jim Hill: As I like to say, everyone in animal kingdom, them’s good eating.

Len Testa: It looks like he’s wearing a lampshade. But like, if Martha Stewart was angry and took her knitting needles and turned it into a lampshade, that’s what the porcupine is essentially wearing. And he goes back into his cave, much like Martha Stewart does.

Len Testa: was it slither the word i’m looking for the gym i’m not i’m not entirely certain behalf of by the stuart’s attorneys i think it for the business right so there’s no parents out today and that’s the parents out one working for the back of their is it wait where alias small parrot small parrot hiding apparently newer coming into multiple listed also so we are coming up on the display of the in any goose and that giant galapagos turtle as opposed to the minor galapagos turtle and all i really see

Len Testa: here is a duck.

Jim Hill: Apparently the tortoise is Union. They have a great attorney.

Len Testa: No, I… Look this. There’s no one here. We’re overlooked. The giant rock is actually… the giant rock is the tortoise. There we Again, I blame my ophthalmologist. So… that is a huge tortoise.

Jim Hill: You if all had gone according to plan…

Jim Hill: we would not only be able to enjoy the view down here, we’ve been able to enjoy the view up there.

Len Testa: Really? In the Tree of Life?

Jim Hill: The plan initially was that there were viewing platforms, I mean literally, you know, if you look at the structure, the whole oil rig thing that they built here, this could have easily supported sort of to the optimum photo spot for this park and the idea was that they’re going to have one iteration was a spectacular restaurant another one was just really in the tree of life yes and you know and the other iteration was just literally a viewing platform we could go up and take great photos and but again is it sort of the theme with this park as morgue gets met on back of the house there was less for you know front of the house

Len Testa: So again, there’s another walkway here, and this is actually one of my favorite parts of this little trail. There’s a small walkway, but you have to notice that it’s there. And if you’re walking towards the Tree of Life, it’s on your left. Again, everyone walks by it because it’s literally, the path can’t be five feet wide.

Len Testa: But it leads you to a small little bench area where you can look across, by the way the vultures are circling Jim, you can look across.

Jim Hill: I’m not dead yet!

Len Testa: You can look across to Asia over where the bathrooms are, sort of just to the left of Flights of Wonder. But you’ve got two waterfalls, one immediately to your left and one in front of you. You’ve got nothing but scenery. You’ve got the birds flying in the sky. It’s an amazing relaxing place. You’ve got a little bit of background music, but it’s not overwhelming.

Len Testa: It’s just very tranquil, very peaceful, and in the middle of a Disney theme park. just never get this. You could come here and nap.

Jim Hill: Absolutely. Absolutely. On the other hand, looking at the way the birds are circling.

Len Testa: Yeah, there’s got to be literally a hundred hawks or buzzards. I hope Big Red is OK.

Jim Hill: Big Red? What? You mean the poachers are back, Jim?

Len Testa: Actually, they’re over, it looks like they’re over Everest right now. dear. Or, yeah, was better than being over Dino land, I guess. Speaking of which, that’s actually one of my favorite phases of when they test attractions.

Jim Hill: Yep.

Len Testa: Before they actually hand them off to ops, what they’ll do is they’ll have the ride track in, what they’ll, they have what they refer to in the attraction as the envelope of protection, as in, If you’re reaching out of the car and you know the six-foot tall man with you know the length of his arm he shouldn’t be able to touch the wall. So what they do to test this theory is they jam a two by four in the front of the car.

Jim Hill: they really?

Len Testa: Seriously. And they then send it out and it’s at the angle as if they Six-foot tall man with an impressive reach. And then they stand in the station and wait. And they see if the entire 2×4 comes

Jim Hill: Yes, and often when it comes back with a shredded 2×4, it’s like, uh-oh.

Len Testa: huh. Missed that. And now you have to walk the ride track and look for the impact point.

Jim Hill: So I just remember being here forever, one day, and just literally sitting, watching a 2×4 take endless rides through these tracks.

Len Testa: Again, more, we’re walking, we just walked past the back of, the tree of life and again amazing and amazing amount of waterfall you also get to see this is probably the place where you get the the closest view of all of the details so in the back we see a a lion I see a crab seal Waldo snail mongoose it’s amazing

Jim Hill: It’s a lot of…

Len Testa: But again, unless you’re coming out of the exit of Tough to Be a Bug, you really don’t ever get to see this part. And generally, everybody when they exit Tough to Be a Bug, everyone goes right. No one goes left, which is why the first half of the trail that we were on is so uncrowded.

Jim Hill: But this this happens over and over again in this part because of you know again roadie deliberately had designed this environment That a lot ambiguous. That’s the thing. It’s an ambiguous environment that they could use the hell out of you and The other thing too by the way you notice it’s remarkably shaded back there.

Len Testa: Yep

Jim Hill: And more to the point it’s one of the genuinely cool parts of the park you know which yeah the water the water the misting of the waterfall

Len Testa: So we’re exiting tough to be a bug. We’re back on Discovery Island going past a beastly bazaar?

Jim Hill: Yeah, which kind of segues into talking about a part of this park that was announced. In fact, you walk in, you know, there on the ticket booth is your dragon. know, beastly kingdom that never got built here.

Len Testa: Beastly Kingdom, that’s right. So we’re walking up towards Camp Mini Mickey, the soon to be formerly Camp Mini Mickey. It’s gonna go the way of Mickey’s Toontown, I believe, but we’ll see. But we’re walking up towards that, so we’re back on Discovery Island, kind of walking back from the Asia Park now.

Jim Hill: But yeah, that was, I mean, again, budget-wise, that was gonna get pushed out. know, phase one of the park was open, that was gonna be phase two. Beastly Kingdom was gonna be festive.

Jim Hill: as a placeholder, in fact, to give you some idea of what a placeholder it was, that the Imaginers were so busy building the other parts of the park, they couldn’t do Camp Minimiki. They actually handed it off to entertainment.

Len Testa: Entertainment built Camp Minimiki and not the Imaginers?

Jim Hill: Yep. mean, and they forced, you know, they threw together the, you know, and again, it’s just, when you realize that, you know, for example, the Festival of the Lion King show, That’s built, know, 90 % of that is built out of old parade floats from Disneyland.

Len Testa: I thought it was Ellen John’s closet. Are you sure about your source on this one? Because I’m like 90 % confident here, Jim.

Jim Hill: That would be the song I just can’t wait to be queen.

Len Testa: You’ve been saving that one, that was good. Sorry, the was great.

Jim Hill: No, just, so they horseshoe this in. just, like, you know, last six or eight months they come up with, you know, these sort of Adirondack theme, you know, you can meet with the characters, you get the show back there. Nobody anticipated that when they opened…

Jim Hill: You know, it’s gonna be there more than a year, right? Two years, whatever. More to the point that it would get, you know, when they were surveying people, they’d say, what’s your favorite thing in the park? Top three. It made the top three.

Len Testa: Really?

Jim Hill: Yeah. And now it’s like, well, you can’t close it. You have a park that has too few attractions.

Len Testa: Yeah, really, there’s what? I mean, legitimately, there’s like a dozen things here.

Jim Hill: Yeah, there’s Magic Kingdom, you’re looking at, you know, 50, 60. And, know, when you talk with the Imagineers who worked on Beastly Kingdom, I had lunch once with Maggie Parr, who worked on the Quest for the unicorn attraction there.

Len Testa: Yep.

Jim Hill: And it’s a heartbreaker. mean, they were going to do things in there, literally, what was going to move you through the maze.

Jim Hill: was that they were going to do this great audio effect where would hear the Minotaur just behind you so if you…

Len Testa: If you dallyed.

Jim Hill: That’s right. Oh look at the time, I’m going to go. Let’s see what’s around this next bend. But they opened up, you know, eventually when you got to the center of the…

Jim Hill: You know, of the maze there was this beautiful grotto where, you know, sunlight streaming in among flowers there on this island in the middle of the grotto was the unicorn that would turn and acknowledge you. And, you know, it was this, you know, it’s amazing, beautiful moment. you know, conversely, it was going to have also this kick-ass inverted roller coaster, really, that, you know, the Dragon’s Tower where the gimmick of it is you’re in the queue and as you’re walking

Jim Hill: through there are these these bats that literally yeah how do you animatronic bats that perceive that you know there’s a great treasure hoard at the center of this thing and we would really appreciate your help in getting the treasure but again you know it’s so you’re going through you know you’re riding up to to you you sort of your launch hill and the bats I may not have mentioned the dragon and they had designed this amazing dragon that was at the center of the coast and you were constantly going to swoop by and

Jim Hill: this huge fire effect, because it was a dragon, it was gonna be different than any Disney dragon you’ve ever seen because he spent all of his 90 % of his time lying on top of this hoard of treasure. So when he stood up, coins and jewels are pressed into his body. But yeah, it was ready to go. It was all there. And in fact, if you remember doing the Discovery River Boat Cruise when this park opened, you literally, it was part of the spiel that coming here soon will be Beast of the Kingdom. And that was why they actually

Jim Hill: the dragon fire effect. fact, those people who went to the cast member previews, they actually took this prop out. was much like they took Big Red out. That when you went by the dragon’s cave, there were all of these lances with suits of armor that had been speared through them, draped over the dragon and melted pieces of, you know, like a helmet sitting on top of a melted pile of iron, know, to sense that there’s a drained dangerous creature in there that has killed people. And it’s like, and come

Jim Hill: back in a couple years and you can meet him.

Len Testa: It’s a great visual though, can totally see it.

Jim Hill: was, in fact, if you go out on the web, look around, there’s one or two shots from the cast preview before they pulled it down.

Len Testa: That’s funny. So we’re walking now, just entered Camp Minimiki here, or as we want to call it, Pandora soon, right? We’re passing Pizza Fari.

Len Testa: And pizza parr actually is not bad. It’s separated very well actually. There’s some great air conditioning back there too. it’s huge! It’s huge!

Len Testa: It is very colourful here. Now they’re gonna, so this is the area that we think is, gonna, will be Pandora?

Jim Hill: as we were talking earlier about this, they’re actually doing the sort of slippy, slidey thing with work. Could be here, could be there?

Len Testa: Well, it’s definitely here. It’s definitely at the front of the park in this portion, because again, the whole notion is to have an area that guests can go into and stay in as the animal parts of the park are such a close for the night. Right, so there actually aren’t any animals in Camp Mey-Maki?

Jim Hill: No.

Len Testa: Mini who are technically animals but if there any kids listening.

Jim Hill: Well 16, 17 year old technically are animals.

Len Testa: So we’re walking over the bridge now to get to Camp Mini Mickey and there’s the dragon fountain that you had mentioned Jim. But right up there you can actually see the rock work. Oh yeah so there’s a so in the middle of the river by the way with the river is essentially stagnant it’s covered in an entire it’s literally looks like a green carpet of moss you can’t see any water.

Len Testa: Because of this green moss that’s that’s over but yeah off in the distance sort of around the corner There’s a there are about half a dozen rock outcroppings where Jim was mentioning they would they would have put these suits of armor That would have melted see you know the sort of where the the lances were stuck in with the you know the holes where they’d be Lances were stuck the ammo armor was dragging off of them. It was oh, okay I thought it was just a detail in the rock yet. You can’t really see it from here, but there’s a cave or a little indentured yeah

Jim Hill: and your boat would come by and going up to this moment, a sensor would kick off as you move between these two points and you’d see the fire, give fire effect and then you’d pass the sensor for the run and it would, they’d do the fire effect afterwards. But yeah, was, this is where…

Jim Hill: just picture here, this would have actually been what we’re looking at here, would have been the nice side of the fairy tale world, which is the quest to the unicorn, and then again, your left and right choice, the theme that land’s been bringing up repeatedly, if you went to the left, that was where the dark side of the kingdom was, that’s where the quest for the dragon, the villains, and those such hung out.

Jim Hill: But yeah, it was ready to go. But again, once they opened this park and discovered, in fact, that’s where this gets kind of interesting, a piece of Disney history is when they opened Animal Kingdom, they thought for sure that people were going to add another day to their vacation because they’re going to stay for the fourth theme park. But what actually happened was that people, know, again, it wasn’t like Americans suddenly acquired yet another vacation day. They just decided, OK, I’m going to shave a half day off of

Len Testa: Or I’m not gonna go to the studios

Jim Hill: exactly, but it literally this park opened and it cannibalized the attendance there

Len Testa: I mean Kingdom is still even to this day. Yeah, 19 20 million Yeah, and this these parks the studios in the animal can were a little less than half, right?

Jim Hill: that’s exactly so you know didn’t wound them at all but here, know, suddenly became Wow, know and and they actually moved money that they were going to spend on expanding animal kingdom to dropping significant new attractions into Epcot

Len Testa: and it’s a coincidence that Rock and Roller Coasters suddenly, you know, it’s like, hey we need something, you know?

Len Testa: We’re walking by now there’s yet another waterfall. This is the one that’s to your right as you’re walking in Camp Minimiki. It’s the one where you see Huey, Louie, and Dewey in their camping outfits. It’s in the Boy Scout outfits to your right and Daisy.

Len Testa: is guiding them. So coming up we’ve got Festival of Lion King building, show building to our right. We’ve got some merchandise and some minor counter service food stands straight ahead of us. That’s really what it looks like. From the crowd it looks like a Festival of Lion King just let out.

Jim Hill: But again, so much of this was… what can we make work in this space? so, you know, the Pocahontas and her friends show, it’s like, okay, you know, how long would it take us to train a corn snake? You know, it’s like, okay, we’re in. And three months. This, you know, again, this flew in in the last six or eight months of the project. And the entertainment group did this one.

Len Testa: And the entertainment group did this.

Jim Hill: And it then became quite a bone of contention because of course, Imagineering having spent, you know, upwards of four million to make this theme park. And now the attraction.

Jim Hill: that was built for 15, you know, the whole area that was built for 15, is suddenly doing land office business.

Len Testa: In regard to this news, the week of this news, or the news of this week, the James Cameron, World of Avatar deal, What’s interesting is that again, they’re looking to put this really down to the front of the park to the point where there’s evidently already been conversations with the folks at Rainforest Cafe to the effect of look, this is James Cameron, we’re gonna give him whatever he wants and if that means we need to swallow your restaurant,

Jim Hill: Yeah, this has been great, it’s been fabulous for us but it’s time for you to go.

Len Testa: we were talking a little bit about this earlier this this this announcement came it surprised a lot of images

Jim Hill: i mean a lot of imaginers

Len Testa: as in coming on a random tuesday in september yeah i didn’t say the interesting thing you said is that you might get you deleted was that it didn’t come in t twenty three it didn’t come on the fortieth anniversary which is you coming up it came sort of on a random tuesday in september

Jim Hill: well that’s that’s another interesting part of the story that supposedly again this is not disney calling the shots on this because Disney wanted to it at D23, in fact, the original Parks and Resorts presentation was a half hour longer when suddenly, because there had been discussions about…

Jim Hill: you well we want to take this to Shanghai we don’t want to take this to Paris we want to take Tokyo it’s like now the lawyers had to go into extra innings so they couldn’t announce the D23. Oh because then it’s a forward-looking statement and there we look now though Disney’s like okay we’re gonna announce on October 1st we’re gonna have something special with Bertha and Fox is no. Fox filmed entertainment the studio that made you know work with James Cameron to make Avatar it’s like no you’re going to announce it on Tuesday it’s like why are you announcing it on Tuesday? Tuesday.

Jim Hill: Tuesday’s always a good news day. Tuesday, they’re announcing it on that day because James Murdoch, the head of Fox, the Fox publishing company, Fox Corp, is going to be back appearing in front of a committee at…

Len Testa: Parliament?

Jim Hill: Parliament, the executive, the concern about the phone hacking thing. And Fox was actually worried that their stock would take a hit that day. So they figured if the pink, know, the James Cameron announcement came out on the same day, it’s a wash.

Jim Hill: This is all hypothetically speaking, No one would ever actually think about this. This is locker room gossip. It’s almost entirely, certainly untrue. This could never happen in the United States. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Screw-less rumor.

Len Testa: Anyway, we’re walking towards Festival of the King now. And they’ve got the misters out, which tells you how warm it is.

Len Testa: Coming up on yet another bridge to Festival.

Jim Hill: But again, I guess the takeaway here, honestly the reason you’re probably going to see Festival stay is the amount of money they’ve spent in closing the building and putting in those big-ass air conditioners.

Len Testa: This is the only thing here right and there’s a the character trails are back there So there’s a ton of people actually coming from the character trails right now, but that’s but that’s about it And then you’ve they’re all they’re all heading towards a festival of like so where would so we’re back now sort of almost as far back as you could go in Campa mini Mickey where would they start putting the pin the Pandora stuff think Pocahontas

Jim Hill: toward the entrance, all right?

Len Testa: Okay, so we’re actually facing the entrance right now, so we’d be back towards the way we came. Oh, so we’d actually take up the Rainforest Cafe area.

Jim Hill: That’s it, exactly.

Len Testa: How big in terms of acreage are they looking at for this?

Jim Hill: We are talking cars land size expansion. I have heard estimates that start at 12 go out to 15.

Len Testa: Yeah, heard like 12 to 16, something like that, 16 and half.

Jim Hill: Now, mind you, because, you know, the… couple of things that we have been promised the second use or I promise suggested loudly the second use of soaring technology there will be a really

Len Testa: so in Matt Hushberg said that this is all this is gonna be soaring over Pandora he was he was on to something

Jim Hill: literally I’m forgetting the name of the Fox producer John Lando that is Cameron’s longtime producers like the flying right when you see the flying right so I mean they’re already where’s imaginary saying really in the conceptual stage

Jim Hill: now we haven’t really got anything. Linda’s like, it’ll be sorted, sorted. Yeah, the other thing is that they want to do…

Jim Hill: What they showed the film a lot to imagineers, they showed the film to…

Len Testa: Imagine what that was like, hey guess what you’re doing today, you 12 hours.

Jim Hill: And the takeaway was like people want to go to the forests of Pandora, but here’s the thing. People like the environment. Yes, but watch the movie again. Where are the sidewalks in Pandora? All right. Where’s the urban planning? I yes, they know about ecology. Yes, they know about conservation. what about urban planning really? Not a damn thing. When you have to move a couple of thousand people through an hour, an environment like this and face it when this opens this is gonna be hot.

Len Testa: Oh yeah.

Jim Hill: You know and everybody wants to touch a plant to make fiber optics move or everybody wants to touch the bug and make it fly.

Len Testa: Right, right, right. Or this is this is a lot of hands-on stuff. This is a lot of theoretical. It’s essentially what they did with Harry Potter right? Where it’s so immersive that you can strain a number of people. Because remember when Harry Potter opened there were nine hour lines.

Jim Hill: But here’s the problem that Harry Potter works daytime, nighttime, Pandora, you have to sell the luminescent idea, means enclosed.

Len Testa: Oh, enclosed, they’re going to enclose the whole thing?

Jim Hill: A giant dome over the animal kingdom. See, well that’s actually…

Len Testa: I think you put a commentary about global warming in there somewhere and that would be fine.

Jim Hill: Well, the interesting thing is that there’s at least one prototype of the building that literally is the

Jim Hill: I mean the idea of you they’re going to do a projection effect of the gas moving across the building that they you know so you’ll get that you know that sort of Jupiter cloud effect

Jim Hill: Because again, they want you to, when you arrive at the parking lot, you’re go, Pandora. And face it, it’s not like they can do another tree.

Len Testa: They can do another tree, no. That’s I thinking actually, how are they gonna fit two trees in here, but they’re not gonna do a tree.

Jim Hill: But it’s a bioluminescent forest that reacts to you that you can walk through, coupled with a couple of smaller attractions. They’re still trying to wrap their head around about…

Jim Hill: How do you do the nine foot tall naked blue characters? You know, that’s going to be a little problematic.

Len Testa: Yeah, so again, the casting for that is going to be incredible. I just want to watch the character procession that comes in for that. What were you saying? This is going to be the second home for what?

Jim Hill: Models from Costa Rica?

Len Testa: Yeah, so apparently you need nine foot tall skinny people, right? To fit in the costumes. So it’s going to be the old folks home for Brazilian models. Which is good though, because they’ve already got the connection to Brazil here. So that’s going to work out well.

Jim Hill: No, it’s definitely… You know, we are so far out from…

Jim Hill: them showing us any art or being, you know, all conceptual at this point. But that the idea is that this is going to be the drive. You’re going to come into the parking lot and much is, you know, much the way you can see ever so go, I want to go there. You’re going to see this door. And, but again, with the understanding it’s to the front of the park, it can stay open later than all of the other stuff. And it will then allow this park to creep its operating hours out from a five to six close to seven day.

Jim Hill: You know, it’s sort of the same thing when they were having the conversations about bringing World of Color here. The whole notion of dropping that in the lagoon in front of Asia, front of expatriate. Which, you know, it was a really great idea until they actually talked to people at Disneyland and talked about, no, no, no, we use purified water, clean and…

Len Testa: Yeah, you’re not going to hear it if it’s green water.

Jim Hill: So, you know, now that show system is in play between Disney Hollywood Studios and Epcot. It’ll be interesting to see where it lands.

Len Testa: I don’t see it in Epcot, I see it in the studios, but we’ll see.

Jim Hill: Yeah, actually you can go to the studios on the run to Echo Lake. Well, actually, they’re looking at it, this is kind of a sad comment on the way Disney thinks now. It’s like, how we could redo Vantasmac and get rid of the cast members. You know, I mean, it’s…

Len Testa: Wait, I thought giant corporations were job creators, Jim. I don’t understand.

Jim Hill: Well, they’ll need people to point sit down there.

Len Testa: Oh, okay, nevermind. We’re back to even then. There we go.

Len Testa: It’s been fantastic. Well, why we walk out to the park? do any sort of a last wrap up. do you think we’ll start to see? concept art and ideas from, from, from, from, the interesting thing is this, right, so you and I both worked in large corporations before. Anybody that’s ever done a multi-year budget for a large corporation will tell you. Generally speaking, everyone knows what’s gonna happen in six months with like 90 % probability. You start talking about a year out, things get to be more, I wouldn’t say hypothetical, I would say more aspirational, right? And by the time you look at two years out, much less certainly, the stuff that’s three, four, and five years out,

Len Testa: are essentially goals that we’d like to achieve but we have neither the time nor the money to commit to them right now. So the thing that I’m interested in, you know, from Pandora is, construction’s not gonna start for another year and a half. We’re not gonna see anything.

Jim Hill: until 2015. Pretty much everything, every single thing other than maybe James Cameron’s name and the color of the people I think are in play at this point.

Len Testa: Very much so. And in fact, what’s kind of interesting is given again that it’s not like they have to go out and do the survey work. They’ve done the survey work. That’s true. Yeah, they kind of know where everything is in the park,

Jim Hill: You mean, all they need to do is go back to the beastly kingdom schematics and go, OK, sewer lines here, electrical there. You know, there’s an infrastructure.

Jim Hill: or places where they can begin to tie into existing infrastructure. That’s because they kind of stubbed everything out of what you’re saying. Yeah, but at the same time it’s just sort of like, okay, what’s feasible? Given the amount of money that we have, what can we do? In fact, let me make a suggestion to West Coast listeners of this. Pay very close attention to Craigslist. Disney has been doing, in fact they’ve actually just

Jim Hill: created a website called disney play test whether you actually recruit people to come in

Jim Hill: and test early concepts for attractions. And I guarantee you, given how blue sky… this is… they’re gonna be running that just through there.

Len Testa: So they typically do that in Glendale?

Jim Hill: Yeah. They’ll bring you in. In fact, I can’t tell you the number of times I heard from disappointed mothers about… took their daughter to the Cinderella play test for the meet and greet thing for here. They took their daughter to do the Sleeping Beauty version. It’s like, what do mean they’re not building it? It was wonderful. Wonderful.

Len Testa: It’s too expensive. I mean that that’s life at a giant corporation though. I can’t see how that happens. So, so Craigslist in Glendale and Burbank. Yep. All right, look out for that plate. If anybody gets anything on that, please contact the gym or I would love to know what what sort of ideas we’ve we’ve they’ve run through you run past you guys on that. All right, so this is a great walk through the animal kingdom. We’re gonna have to this again in six months or so when when we actually know a little bit more about about Pandora and we’ll see what’s what’s changed and we’ll do an update but

Len Testa: but thanks very much for coming out. Thanks very much everybody for listening. I hope this was fun. Jim, I think what’s next?

Jim Hill: We’re gonna do Epcot.

Len Testa: It’ll be fun. We’ll have a lovely weekend. And then fall down.

Jim Hill: And then fall down, Disney tells us, by the way, again, this is the end of September, it’s like 92 degrees here. Disney tells us the temperature’s supposed to drop 25 degrees over the next 24 hours. We’ll see what happens there.

Len Testa: Anyway, guys, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you on the next show.

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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.

Watch or Listen to the Episode

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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