Kelly 0:41

Hello and welcome to the Lowdown on the Plus Up, a podcast where we look at everyone's favorite theme park attractions, lands, textures, and novelties. We talk in, over, about, and through our week's topic, and then, with literally no concern for practicality, safety, or economic viability, we come up with ways to make them better. My name is Kelly McCubbin, columnist for the theme park website Boardwalk Times, and with me as always is Peter Overstreet, University Professor of Animation and Film History in Northern California.

Pete 1:21

So, Pete, what are we talking about today? Today we're gonna talk about uh I have a short list of very, very amazing Disneyland rides that I happen to love very much, and I know many of you out there too, and I know Kelly enjoys this one as well. And it's Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Yes, indeed. We're gonna go merrily, merrily, merrily go on our way to nowhere in particular. Nowhere in particular.

Kelly 1:51

And I suspect that's actually gonna be the case. I suspect we are, in fact, going to go.

Pete 1:54

It'll be going in circles. It'll be uh pretty amazing, and we'll probably wind up in hell.

Kelly 1:59

You'll probably wind up in hell. You know, uh uh c actually before we get to that, c a couple of before inferno, let's you know before we go to hell. Two two quick current event y things. Yeah. You may or may not have heard that the final film that Jim Henson worked on in his life is being shuttered at Walt Disney World. What? Muppet Vision 3D, which is the final film that Jim Henson directed. Yes. They officially announced it will be closing. Uh it will be replaced with, and I think this is an I I'm I'm for this attraction, but I'm very sad about the Muppet Vision thing. They're gonna replace it with a Monsters Inc. door roller coaster where you're going through the doorways. Okay. And I'm like, that sounds neat. That sounds neat. Um, I like Monsters Inc. very much. Uh I'm very sad to see Henson's final uh work go away.

Pete 3:00

Yeah, me too. I I was sad when it when it left Disneyland. Yeah, me too. Because it was kind of abrupt. I mean, mostly because I wasn't paying attention, probably as close as a lot of other uh Disney fans out there do. Right. But I was liter it was literally one of those days of like, I'm gonna go to Disneyland and I'm gonna go see the Muppets. Yeah. Hey, I wanna see I want to go find Bean Bunny, and all of a sudden, wait, what? It's a preview of Pete's Dragon? Yeah, I want to go see Sweetems. Yeah, like come on. So, yeah, having we are of the generation that grew up with the Muppets. Yeah. And unfortunately, we're not the market share.

Kelly 3:36

We are not, and I you know, I have lots and lots of opinions about the Muppets. I I love the Muppets. I I don't think they've ever been the same since Jim Henson passed away. I like Brian Henson very much. I think he's done some very cool stuff. Um it's never quite felt right to me after Henson left.

Pete 3:55

It had it had a couple spurts like Muppet Treasure Island and Muppet Christmas Carol. Yeah. Do stand out, but you can kind of tell that it's almost residual, kind of like how Jungle Book was kind of a residual, even though like you know, Walt got it started, but ultimately it was the nine old men that got it finished. Yeah. And Brian's kind of that way with Jim's work, with his father's work of okay, he we kind of got this kicked off, but let's finish it. You know?

Kelly 4:19

Yeah. And and you know, the so what they are going to do is evidently they're they're going to re-theme their uh this uh the Muppet Vision 3D in Florida's in the uh Hollywood Studios park. And they're going to re-theme their uh rock and roller coaster featuring Aerosmith to be a Muppet themed coaster.

Pete 4:42

Oh. So we're not going to completely lose Muppets.

Kelly 4:44

We're not going to completely lose Muppets. I don't know about you. When I think about Muppets, roller coaster is not the first thing that pops into my head.

Pete 4:52

No, but thinking of Steven Tyler and Swedums in the same pod does actually present some interesting possibilities.

Kelly 4:59

I didn't even consider that they would do both. Right. Like that would be Dude indeed looks like a lady.

Pete 5:06

Today on the Muppet Show, it's the brand new musical guest Aerosmith.

Kelly 5:14

Yeah, I the okay, now I now I'm cheered up a little. Right.

Pete 5:19

I mean, if it was Gonzo running the running some sort of roller coaster.

unknown 5:24

Yeah.

Pete 5:24

You know, hey girls, let's get on the rocket roller coaster. You know, like that would be really cool. That's my terrible gonzo. Yeah. Um but you know, still, I think that would be actually kind of fun, but I'm I'm with you. Like you know, when I think Muppet show, I'm thinking I want to go into the theater. Right. And it's interesting what people consider oh, what's the way to put this? An appropriate venue for Muppets. Um as someone who grew up with them very much from the start, being a major Sesame Street Watcher and being a serious Muppet Show watcher. Yep. And even going out of my way to hunt down old uh uh uh episodes and commercials in which Henson would have oh, what was the character's name? He actually looks like Wallace from Wallace and Gromit, but Oh, I know who you're talking about. But it was one of the really early characters. And Kermit was uh Kermit the Frog was actually a support character. Yeah, that's right. Along with a very weird paper mache purple-headed, you know thing thing called Yorick. That was you know, uh but any and and Rolf the Dog. And Rolf the Dog. We're supporters of the Oh, Sam and Friends. It was Sam. That's right. That's the character. That was that was the Henson show.

Kelly 6:38

And it's funny because I just watched that um Jim Henson documentary uh that Ron Howard did. Ron Howard has really found his niche in documentaries lately. I'm I'm I'm really impressed and I liked that movie a lot.

Pete 6:52

I'm waiting for his Mayberry documentary, though.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Little Opie Cunningham. Oh, yeah. Well, they're gonna do a whole documentary about Floyd the Barber. I'd go. Yeah. Oh, Hopi, he was he was a nice boy.

Kelly 7:14

You're doing you're doing Floyd uh by way of Second City Television.

Pete 7:19

I know, but still, you know, I still have a hard time not hearing that when I watch a real Mayberry episode.

Kelly 7:27

Anyway, I just I wanted to bring that up.

Pete 7:29

Uh you know that is kind of a tragedy. I get what they're trying to do, and it it does feel like an another little piece of our childhood getting chipped away, and I hate to sit make it sound that melodramatic. Yeah. But I I was always honestly, I was always a little trepidatious with Disney owning and or controlling the Muppets because the Muppets always felt like this in it was like independent cinema to me. Yeah. You had Warner Brothers, that was a big company, and you had Disney that was a big company, and then there was this whole other little realm that was just Henson with all of his crazy Muppeteers and and puppet makers and working in felt and foam and latex, and you know, whether it be Jim Henson Presents or the Muppet Show or the Dark Crystal or whatever. Follow that bird. Yeah, it just felt independent of everything else, and there was kind of a purity to it. And I'm I again I hate to use that word because it just sounds so pretentious. Yeah. But in this case, it was actually applicable.

Kelly 8:28

I I agree with you. And you know, we we have to acknowledge that Henson himself was trying to sell the Muppets to Disney before he passed away.

Pete 8:36

Oh, yeah.

Kelly 8:37

Um, so this was not like an against his wishes kind of thing.

Pete 8:40

No, but it's look at somebody and go, that's not a good idea.

Kelly 8:44

Yeah. And the deal fell through. Like uh it ended up the Muppets went to some German company for a while, and then Disney somehow bought them back. It's very strange.

SPEAKER_05 8:54

Yeah.

Kelly 8:54

But I I agree with you. There's something, especially someone pointed this out uh recently, and I got a big head of steam about it. Yeah. And I was like, that can't be true, but it absolutely is. Someone pointed out that there's not a single Muppet movie that has made as much as any other even accounting for inflation that has made as much as any single Elvin in the Chipmunks movie. And someone pointed that out, and I got so angry. That you know and then I went and looked. I I checked the numbers, I adjusted them for inflation because that's the kind of guy I am. And it's absolutely true. So weird. Yeah, so I think we have to remember that the Muppets uh, you know, we all grew up with Sesame Street, and that was fairly ubiquitous. Yeah. But and and I think the the original Muppet show produced out of England was a a fairly substantial syndicated hit. Yeah. But past that i they're kind of niche. Yes, they very much are. And so, you know, there's a lot of us that are very, very devoted to the Muppets, but there's not that many. And so I get the business decision. I get why Disney might say, hey, you know, the this is playing to half full houses, not a lot of people are paying that much attention to the Muppets anymore. They just tried to do a um a Dr. Keith series and it didn't pan out. So I I get where they're coming from. That said, the thing that we're about to talk about today, I would venture to guess many, many less people alive today have seen the source material. True. Because Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is very loosely based around a package film that Disney did post-World War II called The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.

Pete 10:50

Which is just a weird coupling of stories. Yeah. These two shorts that really didn't quite they're kind of sorta held together with Basil Rathbone and Bing Crosby narrating them, and they're kind of saying, Well, this is my favorite tale from where I come from, which is Ichabod Crane.

Kelly 11:08

Well, and and I will I will argue that the Ichabod Crane section is much superior to the Mr. Toad section. Uh I like the Mr. Toad section. Yes, I I get it. Yes, absolutely. I I've talked to recently a a fairly prominent other podcaster about what's going on at the Magic Kingdom in Florida. And he believes, and I've heard other people say the same thing, that the area that is currently Liberty Square in Florida, which backs into the Haunted Mansion, is not going to be Liberty Square for a whole lot longer and may very well become Sleepy Hollow.

Pete 11:46

Oh, cool. And I'm like, that's neat. You have to go through Sleepy Hollow to get to the Hall of Presidents.

Kelly 11:52

Well, I think for many, many reasons that the Hall of Presidents is not long for this world.

Pete 11:58

Just gather round while I elucidate while that happens outside when it gets late. The Republicans and the Democrats and ghosts and bands. Never mind, I'm gonna stop.

Kelly 12:09

It was a good start.

Pete 12:10

It was a good start, but it fell apart almost immediately. I'm I'm right there with him. Yeah. You know, there's only so much you can do with a you know 47 mannequins. Our very, very first episode. Yeah. Great moments with Mr. Lincoln. Yeah. Uh we talked about its importance and its significance. And notice how most of that episode we never mentioned the Hall of Presidents. And I I know that there's going to be some Disney World listeners out there and fans of it who may hear this episode, you know, especially people who reside in the great state of Florida, who may go, You're full of you're full of poopy. You know, we don't that's the most amazing thing ever. But you know, honestly, is it really? Not really. Yeah. It just becomes a thing of like it becomes this game in a way of like, oh gee, there's a new president. How are the Disney Imagineers gonna make this president look awful? Yeah. Yeah. No, I I uh just you just couldn't, you just can't do it anymore because it does, it just lacks the same punch as great moments with Mr. Lincoln.

Kelly 13:19

It does. Now, now, you know, if it was great moments with John Quincy Adams, we'd have a whole different thing.

Pete 13:24

Absolutely. Right? I mean, that's that's still a better, a better setup.

Kelly 13:28

Great moments with Garfield.

Pete 13:29

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Great moments with Taft. Hold on a second. Let me get out of this chair here. Just oh, oh God. I'm already up. Okay, okay.

Kelly 13:43

I'm ready. Okay. Taft Taft is a little bit like Alfred Hitchcock. It's a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

He's like that guy that you always see at a sci-fi convention who's got uh Nutter Butters uh in his in his fanny pack. He's one of those guys. That's some Taft talks. Whatever I hear, because we don't have any recordings of Taft, but uh we know we know what he kind of looked like.

Pete 14:06

You know what sounds good right now, Nutter Butters. I know. I kind of want to get some nutter butters. We'll be right back after these messages by nutter butter.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Um Nutterbutter, you have to say it right. Nutterbutters.

Pete 14:22

All right, so anyhow, Hall of Presidents and Ichabod Crane. It's interesting that it starts off. Our story actually does start off with that film. Because The Wind in the Willows is a marvelous story of all these shenanigans and adventures of mole and rat and toad and all these other river-born creatures in this little magical realm, even though they interact with real people, yeah, like humans. Yeah uh for some reason we're living in a world in the in the realm of the Wind and the Willows, in which a toad actually has a seat in Parliament as a Lord because he owns Toad Hall. You know, like there's this long, illustrious family that owns this huge building out in the countryside by the river and all the other animals, like he's the landowner. That's how English society is kind of built around. Right. And you have McBadger and all these other you know, Raddy and Mole and the Weasels. Yep. But then he goes wandering off and he squanders it all by going into Mr. Winky's bar and buying a motor car. Oh, who hasn't been there? Yes. I mean Motica, he a bit of all right. Yeah.

Kelly 15:50

You know, someday I want to see someone that that's beatboxing, but they sound just like that.

Pete 15:55

Mr. Toad beatboxing. See, here's okay, so little confession time. I am a massive fan of not only the ride, but also the cartoon. Yeah. And as much as I also, and I agree with with you, Kelly, that The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is actually a superior cartoon. Yeah. Um, and is a short. I like I like the Mr. Toad cartoon. But I love the Mr. Toad. There's so much whimsy to it. I always loved Wind in the Willows as a story as a kid. Yeah. Uh it appeals to my ADHD brain of moving from one mania to another. I mean, he really is the physical embodiment of ADHD. Totally. And hyper focus and never finishing what you started, et cetera. Right. Uh and for a while I used to get compared to him uh by my parents. Uh but I I always loved the characterizations that they did in the Disney film. Right. But it doesn't quite capture all of the charm of the book.

Kelly 16:49

No, it's it's one of those, you know, you you never know when you put Disney up against source material how it's gonna work out. And in some cases, um you know, uh Peter Pan is a great example. It works really well. It's like, oh, this actually kind kind of takes it to the next level. Yeah. Um, you know, you could make that argument to out for Alice in Wonderland, though I I think people would argue it, but I I think that it actually does a quite good job of interpreting that material. Yep. Mr. Toad not saying that it's a a bad film, but it it is certainly not Wind in the Willows. No.

Pete 17:29

It's kind of a by the numbers descriptor of it.

Kelly 17:33

It is, and you know, they they they picked out like one kind of prominent feature of it, really hit it hard, they made it a little more crass than it probably needed to be. Yeah. But it's funny and there's some real charm to it.

Pete 17:49

Yeah, and uh and and again, another truth to be known, um, even though I didn't name him, my partner and my stepdaughter named him. I have a French bulldog whose name is Mr. Toad. Yeah, who's often here when we're recording. Who's yeah, he's sometimes you can hear him in the background snorting away and being a goof. Uh he's not here with us today, but uh but yeah, he's a sweet little chocolate Frenchie, and he's really but he kind of looks like a toad, and that's kind of what led to it. But uh over time we like to joke that he is our wild ride. Yes. Um because of the ride itself, is that we love it that we love that ride so much, and it he really is kind of the epitome of it. So you can tell that I'm I'm kind of you know emotionally invested in this particular episode here. Yeah. Uh because it is my favorite ride in fantasy land.

Kelly 18:38

Um that's a tough call, but uh it's it's close for me. Yeah. Yeah.

Pete 18:43

I mean, I love Peter Pan. Yeah. When I can actually get on it because the lines are ridiculously long. Yeah. Snow White. I love I love the Alice ride. The Alice ride is charming. They're all great, but if you if you really ask me which of those is your absolute favorite, I go, it's Mr. Toad. Yeah. And I think it's the madcap nature of it. Yeah. It is, I mean, it really is kind of neurodivergence in a ride form. Uh it's like a sugar high and ADHD mania hitting you for a minute and 30 seconds where you're riding through and getting rattled back and forth, and you're pretending to steer this thing. Yeah. And you come out going, Wait, it's over? That was quick, but I but you you think it's longer than it actually is, but it's not. It's this really short little jaunt. And yet it really packs a punch, and uh, you just say Mr. Toad, and everybody goes, ha ha. They think of the ride, they don't think of the cartoon that we were just talking about.

Kelly 19:38

Oh, I think that's true. And uh and uh you know, the the original ride when it first opened was literally 98 seconds. That's how long the ride was. Um it's it was expanded a little when they did new new Fantasyland in '83, you know, Tony Baxter's rework. Yeah. So it's a little over two minutes now. Yeah. Um but they didn't change much, which is interesting. I think there's some really interesting things about this ride. Uh one is that it is so Snow White is a book report ride. It's like scenes, scenes from the movie, you get to the end. Uh Peter Pan is two. Uh Alice is two, even though the ones that came in later, like uh Pinocchio also, book report ride. Yeah. Toad is the only one that's not. And I think that that's really interesting. In fact, the what happens in Mr. Toad's Wild Ride doesn't occur in the movie at all. No, it's it's a missing part of the film.

Pete 20:41

Yes, that's the thing. It's referred to. Yeah, it's referred to like he steals the car and then he's instantly on trial. Like you never actually see him driving that car.

Kelly 20:50

Which is weird when you think about it, because is wouldn't that be like that is animation gold right there? Yeah, all the things didn't do it.

Pete 20:57

They never did it. Like that, like, wait a minute. Now, maybe they planned it. Yeah. Maybe they thought about like, yeah, we're gonna do this, and they just went, yeah, we're running it out of money, because this is uh, you know, post-war, and really like we're things are tight. We just gotta move forward.

Kelly 21:13

Yeah, and and and we'll get a little bit into the design of it as we move along. I believe what happened was the initial idea was that this was not gonna be a dark ride, that it was going to be a small roller coaster. Oh man. And then that would have been cool. And that's the the way that they went developing it for a while until Walt stepped in and said, you know what? I want these rides to be for younger kids, and that's going to be too scary. And so they changed direction. But they kept the theme of the ride, which is you know, you're on a wild ride, which makes sense in the terms of a roller coaster. Sure. And it works very well in the the sense of a very small dark ride. Yeah. Because it is it has the least area of anything in fantasy. Land. But that works in its favor because it take it has to, to get show scenes in, take very, very sharp turns. Yeah. It has to keep turning. The cars had a four-foot turn radius. Oh. It gave it very little room. But the effect when you're on it is that you are driving like crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the car only has like a half horsepower engine. It can't go fast, but it feels like it's going fast.

Pete 22:32

It does. And part of it is just the claustrophobic nature of that ride. Yeah. And also this ride is interesting because unlike Alice and unlike Peter Pan, and unlike Snow White, this ride is more of a storybook than any of them. Because most of the figures are two-dimensional.

Kelly 22:52

That's right. Even when they they revised them and tried to make them more dimensional, they still kept the look of being two-dimensional. Yeah. Which is interesting. It was a choice.

Pete 23:04

Yeah, it was a direct choice. And part of it is probably space, saving space so people can reach out. I mean, they were getting sick of people spitting on the chairs or trying to steal Snow White's apple, but I'm sure Tony Baxter would have some insight on this. But yeah, everything just has this like two-dimensional quality to it, which I think maintains the you're in a storybook or you're in this cartoon a little bit better than having these dimensional animatronics of the Shesher cat or the Queen or things like that. So for me, I think that's part of its appeal, is its gankiness, frankly. Oh, I think it's two-dimensional gankiness of it.

Kelly 23:41

Yeah, I I think its two-dimensionalness makes it feel a lot more like an older dark ride, which it which it is. But it I I love that feel. Like it's as you as you go through like the new Snow White or the Snow White from '83, um it they feel like something different. And I like them, but they're they feel different. Peter Pan feels very different. Um Alice in Wonderland, as it got more sophisticated, felt very different. But Mr. Toad feels like a classic dark ride, a really good one.

Pete 24:17

Yeah. It's really it's it's one of the best, actually.

Kelly 24:20

And the other thing I was gonna point out, you know, we've talked about this before, but you remember how originally when they opened the dark rides, the idea was that you were the character? Yes. And there was a lot of confusion among people about that. So eventually Snow White got put in the Snow White ride and and Alice got put in the Alice ride and stuff like that. Mr. Toad, still, you are the character. That never changed. It was the only one where they kept it and it seemed to work.

Pete 24:48

Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of there was a lot of I mean, when you say that, it makes me think of kind of the stuff that they've been trying to do with the marketing of current IP materials in uh Disneyland uh and Disney World, in which they take Star Wars or Marvel and they say, okay, you know, this this ride takes place in between this movie and that movie, or just after The Mandalorian. Galaxy's Edge, I know, has a very distinct timeline in comparison to the films. Yeah, they may have shackled themselves with that, but True, true. But that that experiment is not necessarily a new one because that's exactly what Mr. Toad is. It's it's a yeah, you didn't actually see him driving the car at all. He just walks over towards the bar and then all of a sudden he's on trial. Right. Like, what what do you mean? Wild ride. He never saw him drive the car. He bought it, he sold Toad Hall for it. Yeah. And so you know the Imagineers must have had a field day going, let's actually see what he did in the car. Right. And so, like, that's this missing chapter. And frankly, it's more interesting than the actual material.

Kelly 25:58

And it has an alternate ending because the whole boy does it ever.

Pete 26:04

Yeah, no, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

This isn't on the Plus Up is a Boardwalk Times podcast.

Kelly 26:22

At BoardwalkTimes.net, you'll find some of the most well-considered and insightful writing about the Walt Disney Company, Disney history, and the universe of theme parks available anywhere. Come join us at BoardwalkTimes.net.

Pete 26:48

In the cartoon, he gets away with it. In this one, he really doesn't.

Kelly 26:55

I saw a couple of different interviews about this ride, and you know, they would ask different people that were involved, you know, how did that ending come about? Like it's it's good it's fabricated out of whole cloth. Like there's nothing in the movie that suggests that you get hit by a train, die, and go to hell. Right. Like there's nothing. Everyone just kind of said Walt was okay with it. And that's that's all.

Pete 27:18

Walt was okay with it. Like, I I kind of imagine like Walt going, you guys, you know, you all you guys have got to get this finished, so better get over there and get it finished. Yeah. Well, what am I, you know, what am I supposed to do, Walt? I mean, you're you're totally pushing us. I mean, we only we haven't even started on tomorrow lane. You're taking up all this time. What are you gonna do with us? You know, you're just you're just a grumpy old fart. Why don't you just go to hell? That's a great idea. Walt, we're gonna take that. Let's do that.

Kelly 27:46

Well, we we do know a l a little bit about what happened here. The designs for the the dark rides were were made up by the imagineers. Yes. Um and and I want to go a little deeper into specifically one of them real shortly, but Claude Coates. And and what happened was Claude Coates, who had worked on the film. Yes, he had done backgrounds for the film, Walt came up to him and said, I would like you to make a model based on Ken Anderson's ideas uh and drawings of what this ride would look like. Oh, and Coates was like, Yeah, sure. So Coates Coates had studied both architecture and art, so he was a pretty good choice for this. Yeah. And he so he makes the model, sends it off, and he thought that was the last you'd ever hear from it uh uh about it. But the company that was making that was actually building these flats, yeah. So a Aero Development was building the vehicles and the ride system, uh, the company that was building the flats for the blacklight were uh the Grosh Scenic studio. Oh, okay. But they were having labor problems. Uh oh. So they were gonna be able to finish Peter Pan and they were gonna be able to finish Snow White. They were not gonna make it on Toad. So evidently one day, Claude Coates and Ken Anderson are standing in a room, Walt comes bursting in and says, Grosh says they can't finish Mr. Toad for opening day. You know the film better than they do, you guys do it, and walked out of the room. Whoa. Yeah.

Pete 29:26

Holy man is in the forest. Yes that's insane.

Kelly 29:32

And and Coates became an imagineer at that point and and never really looked back. He did a little bit of fill sort of finishing up some projects he was working on, and after that he was purely a Disneyland guy. Wow. I mean, his entire career changed at that point.

Pete 29:48

That's that is bizarre. I can't imagine being put into that situation.

Kelly 29:53

Well, and especially like he's being asked to work in a medium he's never worked in before, which is ultraviolet paint.

Pete 30:03

And we talked about the origins of it, but imagine having never done it before and all of a sudden like being asked to hinge the whole ride on it. Right. You know, I mean Claude Coates was like a really like calm, quiet guy. But you know, I'd imagine like I mean, at the time there was you this was not there wasn't any head shops. You couldn't just go in and get your own UV bulbs and grab a blacklight poster and study it. You know, there but I imagine Claude Coates, like, you know, in Mr. Toad's, you know, working away and painting and having a great time, but that's you know, that's not what happened here. So, you know, it's like, okay, this is not this is not gonna happen. So I've worked in blacklight. It is it's hard to master. I had to do a bunch of blacklight murals for haunted attractions, and uh, and once again, I will actually credit Claude Coates's work in Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and Peter Ellenshaw's work on the giant map of Disneyland that is UV UV reactive. Yeah. And I received some advice from an imagineer friend of mine one time who said, make a color chart. Start there. Like, because when you get a set of black light paints, they're all translucent. And so you have to start, you gotta get a white, you gotta get a UV reactive white, a normal black, and then you get a blue, a yellow, a green, a magenta, and you get the spectrum, all of those neon colors, and sit down and take meticulous notes of what type of percentage, how much yellow you put in, how much magenta you put in, and start mixing non quote neon unquote colors. Trying to mix a flesh tone in UV paints. Yeah. And it's hard on the eyes. You have to wear sunglasses or very, you know, tinted glasses to protect your eyes, working with UV lights. But it takes a while to get a hang of it. So I'd love to know what their time frame was because without having any experience, getting straight into that is insane. Because those the paintings, even the original ones were amazing. And then you look at the ones from 83 that are still there, they're just extraordinary. Yeah. There's some of the best black light painting in the park, frankly.

Kelly 32:23

Just just gorgeous. And and what what makes black light so useful there is because they were in such a small space, you could really, really like you could disguise where the walls were very easily if you focused your lights well enough. Yes. Uh one thing I just learned just this morning, focusing the lights was a problem because they burn out like all lights do. Sure. So what would happen is people would come in, maintenance would come in, and replace the lights, and they wouldn't get put back in place right, and it would screw the effect. Right. So Yale Gracie, the the great special effects imagineer, famous famous for the haunted mansion, yeah, uh, figured out a way to lock them in place. Oh wow. So that you could because sometimes you have to turn them to replace them, but you could you would turn the light, replace it, and then turn it back and it would snap into place. Oh, nice. So he designed a system so they would always go back where they needed to go.

Pete 33:23

That's cool. Isn't that neat? That is really neat, actually. I mean, that that sounds kind of that sounds mundane, but I as a show a showmaker, like I get it. That's that's really remarkable.

Kelly 33:34

Let me um, if I can, since we're talking about coates now, I kind of I went on a uh a coates um thing. And I there's hardly anything in Disneyland from the beginning to the late 60s that Claude Coates wasn't involved in. Sure. He might be the most fundamental imagineer to work in the park. He works on everything.

Pete 34:01

I would imagine so. I think his I think because Claude apparently was famous for being very quiet. Yes. He's just one of those very quiet individuals who just is a go-getter. Like I I've got a job, I gotta do it. So, you know, uh I I you and I talked about this before the broadcast of the Ten Sennial. Yeah. Of uh Walt showing Julie Reem around. Oh, I'd like you to meet uh Julie Reem. She's our Ten Sennial. And and uh Claude has got this great model of uh the sea witch. Yeah. And uh and you you actually oh Claude and he's Yeah, what is it, Walt?

SPEAKER_02 34:37

Hey, hi how you doing, Julie. It's nice to meet you.

Pete 34:40

Hey, uh could you tell uh Julie Reem a little bit about uh what they're what they're gonna see in the in the in the in the ride? And then it cuts to you this shot of the model, and you hear it. Yes, well, uh they're actually going to have these pirates running around on the thing. So obviously, somewhat like probably exatencio had like, okay, let's let's get over to the recording studio. We're gonna record you. Which is get right up on the mic there, Claude.

Kelly 35:06

It's interesting because you know, he he was a soft-spoken guy, as is from every indication, but his life does not indicate that. No. So tell. Yeah, Claude Coates, um, he went to Los Angeles Polytechnic High School. Uh-huh. Uh he was good friends with Imagineer Lee Blair. Uh Lee Blair actually wrote something in his uh yearbook. Nice. No, Lee Blair is a guy who's he's a really interesting guy, a wonderful watercolorist. But there's another thing, much to Lee Blair's chagrin, that is more famous about him, but we'll get to that in a second. So uh Coates studied architecture and painting there, um, became a watercolorist like Blair was. He was a member of the California Watercolor Society, which Lee Blair was president of for quite some time. But at a certain point, Claude Coates decided that the light in Japan was probably really interesting. Okay. So he got a job stoking the boiler on the SS President Cleveland so he could sail to Yokohama. He did supposedly, according to his son, Alan Coates, according to Alan Coates, um, he showed up for him one day on the ship. I guess he was just gonna show up and ask for a job. And the people in the ship were like, hey, who are you? He was like six foot seven or something. He was a big guy, yeah. And uh he got there, and realizing that they might not let him on the ship, he said, the captain owes me money. And supposedly nobody working on the ship liked the captain, and they thought that was pretty plausible, so they let Claude Coates on. He got he got a job stoking the boiler. He went to Yokohama, he ended up going to Shanghai just so he could paint. He came back with exhibitions of of paintings. Wow. I mean, this was not a shy guy. No. He ends up coming back, he gets a job working for MGM. He's he's an assistant art director on musicals, he does design for the great Zigfield. Huh. He meets Herb Ryman and Ken Anderson there. He meets uh another Disney artist, Phil Dyke, who uh was at Chinard, which uh Claude Coates had started doing some studying at, which uh Lee Blair was also at. Yeah. Um Phil Dyke evidently gets him in at Disney where he kind of he starts doing background work. Oh wow. So here's here's the the first three things that he works on to do background work on. Okay. He does Pluto's Judgment Day. Oh wow. Little Hiawatha, okay, the old mill. I mean, and you can see those backgrounds in in your mind, right? Oh yeah.

Pete 38:13

They're extra beautiful. They're extraordinary. The the background caves of Pluto's Judgment Day. Oh my god. The greens and the purple, like everybody paints hell with yellows, reds, and oranges. They never do it with with pink and purple and green. Right. Yet it looks ridiculously sinister.

Kelly 38:33

Oh, it's so great. And of course, the old mill is maybe the only cartoon short ever told in background. Right. Right?

Pete 38:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything else is kind of eh, whatever. Yeah, it's the background is the story.

Kelly 38:46

But then he worked on um he he did the backgrounds for the wishing well scene in Snow White. Wow. He did backgrounds for Ferdinand the Bull, he did Geppetto's Workshop. Those are all his drawings. Uh he worked on The Sorcerer's Apprentice, The Pastoral Symphony, he worked on Dumbo, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Yep. Uh, and then he worked on Cinderella. And by the time of Cinderella, he was working with a different Blair. Uh-huh. He was working with Lee's wife, Mary. Yay, Mary Blair. And at that point, the visual style of the Disney studios changed. Mostly because of Mary Blair. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Probably probably, you know, Lee Lee Blair was a brilliant artist. Mary Blair was a genius.

Pete 39:42

I think it was two factors that changed the style. We had mentioned this before. Yeah. Actually, I think we talked about this briefly in the previous uh episode, actually, um, episode 13, in which yes, Mary Blair very much defines the post-war years. Yes. Um, however, I also think there was a new sensibility that had crept in to animation in general, and that was due to uh Stephen Basuz's uh studio of UPA. Yeah. So you you combine UPA's abstractionism and simplicity in design with Mary Blair's exquisite color work. Yeah. And you get a whole new cocktail of of art artistry that kind of sets the tone for a lot of animated features into the 90s. Absolutely.

Kelly 40:33

You know, I think I think Ivan Durle might might factor into some of that too, where there's an interesting new take on how things are shaped. You know, like Mary Blair's using colors that if you are to describe them, they don't make sense, but they work. And Ivan Durle's using shapes that don't really make sense, but they work somehow. Yeah. And at this point, like Claude Coates is super keen on working with Mary Blair because they're they're changing the way backgrounds work. And that and that's what they're both working on.

Pete 41:06

Well, and they speak the same language. I mean, they both have a very good notion of color.

Kelly 41:10

Yeah. A little bit after Cinderella, he's I knew you would appreciate this one. He paints all the maps in Captain Nemo's chart room for 20,000 Days Under the Sea.

Pete 41:22

That's so cool. No wonder they look so great.

Kelly 41:24

Yes. Uh he works on Lady and the Tramp, and that's about when Mr. Toad's Wild Ride happens. Nice. And from that point on, he's a theme park guy. Like he goes from uh, you know, take that whole list of things that he worked on. Those are these are foundational animated pieces. Yeah. And he's no longer an animator.

Pete 41:47

Wild. And he was thrilled. He liked it. Of course, yeah. It's something it's a new medium to work in. Right. Yeah. That's that's that's really cool.

Kelly 41:55

Yeah, and so uh Claude Coates and uh Ken Anderson ended up painting all of those flats. Wow. And the original Mr. Toad was purely flats, there wasn't a three-dimensional object in there. Yeah, no. Including the demons at the end, everything. They were they were all flat flat. Yeah. Um then they painted that big mural in the queue. Oh they did that together. Yeah. The flats were all this is interesting, I thought. The flats were all painted in this building that they called the Special Effects Building. Uh-huh. The build the special effects building was this corrugated steel building that was built entirely for Bob Maddie. Remember him from the Jungle Cruise episode? Bob Maddie. Yeah, the guy that built all the Jungle Cruise animals as well as Bruce the Shark from Jaws. Uh-huh. Um but that building was specifically for him to do special effects for 20,000 Leagues. That makes sense. They co-opted the space. Evidently, there was no heat, there was no cooling, it was a very uncomfortable place.

Pete 42:54

You can actually see uh footage of that building in an episode of Wonderful World of Color, in which Kurt Russell is and the Osmonds get a tour of the haunted mansion. And there's like brief clips of them testing out some of the pop-up ghosts and some of the, you know, the uh Phineas Phineas Pogg uh drinking up on the chandelier. They're they're testing something, and you can see little corners of that particular building. Yeah. And you can see because you can see the corrugated walls in the background. I'll have to watch it. I have a copy of that. Yeah, and it's and it's really I mean, and Kurt Russell, you know, Kurt Russell doing his best, you know, bad, you know, Disney's World of Color puns. Yes. Um, but still, it it's an interesting little time capsule to looking at where these guys were building all this stuff. Yeah. It's just it's intriguing to me.

Kelly 43:45

Kurt Russell, the Osmonds, and E. J. Peaker. Yeah. I don't know who E.J. Peaker is other than that she was someone that was in that special.

Pete 43:51

I I kind of wished it was E. G. Marshall. Oh, that would be great. Like, okay, Osmonds, let's go on board, you bastards. And I'm not even talking like young, like CBS mystery theat radio theater or even the president of the United States is Superman 2. I'm talking creep show E.G. Marshall E. G. Marshall. The hair sticking out all over the place. You know, wearing it with the white gloves, not touching anything, you know, just this total OCD maniac walking around and imagineering, making everybody kind of nervous, especially the Osmonds.

Kelly 44:27

So but I just I think I think you know Coates is Coates is so interesting, and and Mr. Toad is exactly where he starts. Yes. You know, he's he starts at Mr. Toad and then he is ubiquitous through that part. Oh yeah. You know, the previous episode, uh Inner Space, Claude Coates. Yep. Um there's there's hardly anything from that point on that he doesn't touch. In fact, he goes through um the other dark rides once they've got Mr. Toad kind of set up and starts adjusting them too. Um he they they're actually this is interesting in a big sound stage that the studios had, yeah, they are they built the tracks for both um Peter Pan and for Mr. Toad, and they're putting the flats up and they're they're running them in there, adjusting the whole thing as they go. Wow. I mean, it was just that there was no none of this is like drawing a plan.

Pete 45:29

What's this plan stuff? Walt said we gotta do it now. He told us to go a hell. He said it was all right. We gotta do it. We can't we can't waste time planning this. What's this what's this plan stuff? Yeah, you know who plans? Just get her done. Yeah, get it, yeah, get her done. That's it. Um Claude is such an interesting imagineer. I mean, one of my favorite imagineers is, of course, Roly Crump.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

Yes.

Pete 45:58

Uh, but Claude, when it comes to the quality of his work, yeah, it is phenomenal. Oh, yeah. The the output and the quality that he put into the work in that park. Yeah. Really, really mind-bending what he wound up doing. Yeah. So my hats off to Claude.

Kelly 46:15

Speaking, speaking of Rolly Crump, I I just saw someone has put out a big sort of deluxe book about the original Berry Tales ride that he made for Knott's Berry Farm. Uh-oh. I looked at it, I almost pulled the trigger and bought it, but it's almost like 50 bucks. Uh uh, but still, I'm like, ooh, that's pretty cool.

Pete 46:36

So for all you listeners out there, we will be opening up a t-shirt shop soon to help fund our mania and keep your eyes open for our there's snow on the manor horn, but there's coke on Main Street t-shirts. And our magnification arrow shirts. We will be selling those soon. We will announce these, but they but you know, I figure if we sold like 10 of those shirts, we could probably each get one of those books.

Kelly 47:00

Uh yeah, I think I think it's probably right. That's probably about it.

Pete 47:03

You know, 10 of those shirts. Five bucks a pop, we'll get it. You know, there you go. There's one, but we'll fight over it, you know. This is uh I want to take a quick deep dive, if you don't mind. Uh, you did your deep dive with Claude. Yeah. I want to do a deep dive about one of these, a couple of these notions. And I find it interesting that Claude Coates, one of his earliest animation bouts, was the old mill. Yes. Because we had mentioned this during Utopia, in which one of the earliest kind of dark ride setups was getting into a car, the scenic railway, and it was originally called the Old Mill. It was built on Coney Island, I think it was 1893 or something. Very early. Yeah. And um that setup of having an electric current go through to a motor that's actually housed in the car, and the car is actually each one is individually powered. Yeah. And uh what happens is that there's a little trigger on the ride that you you hit the, you know, the operator would hit the back, this this pedal or something, and it would basically make a little contact with a shoe that basically gets the current that's being pumped through a little central rail. Yeah. And that's what powers the car throughout the dark ride. So for Mr. Toad and and just about insert any dark ride up to a certain point before they started going trackless or before they came up with other technologies, roughly all the way up until about the mid-80s. This was a a process. So it for about 90, almost a hundred years, this has been the process of running a dark ride. If you go, if you went to any carnival, um, I I still have fond memories of going into old spook spook houses and and that kind of stuff with butler amusements and other types of you know, traveling carnivals. Yeah. But there's a sound to those older carney rides where you get into it and you sit down and you hear this as you're driving. And it's like, I don't want to put my hands outside this car because I don't want to get electrocuted. I will die if I if I go anywhere near the floor in this thing. You know, and you've got the smell of ozone and and three-in-one oil and god knows what else is in there, you know, rotting corn dogs and and and spilled soda and spit, whatever it is is in there. And usually the the those types of carney rides are really, no offense, carney ride owners, but a lot of them are not that interesting. No, they're really not. There are standouts, sure. But not many of them. But but that that type of track ride is really interesting. They decide to go with this let's just go with a traditional dark ride, old mill style. Yeah. If they get in a car and they go, who cares?

Kelly 49:41

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. You know, there's I read a quote from Bob Gurr uh who who s uh s sort of designed the vehicles. He he he kind of conceptually designed them, then sent them over to Arrow to be manufactured. Uh but he he's he said, I think this was in the mid-80s. He was like, be careful with those cars and Mr. Toad, they're the last piece of the original Disneyland left.

Pete 50:04

Yeah.

Kelly 50:05

And I was like, oh wow, that's touching. I'm not sure if it's true, but it's touching.

Pete 50:09

I hope Bob's right, because that's kind of nice though. Yeah. Quick little note about Arrow, Arrow Manufacturing. They were, they are no longer, I don't know if they're still around anymore, but I think they are in some way. Yeah. In the day when they were building stuff for the parks, they were housed in Mountain View, California. Yeah. Right off a shoreline boulevard, not too far from the computer museum that's there. Uh-huh. And it's behind this big century movie theater. Yeah. There is a little industrial complex, and that's where they built all these rides. And it's now part of the Google complex that's over there. Yeah. So one one of you, one of you guys listening to this who might be working for Google, you're probably standing on top of where they actually built this ride. So uh invite me over there so I can stand there.

Kelly 50:52

I was I was reading a thing that Bob Gur had written about working with aero development, and he loved them. And he he was like, the great thing about these guys is they have no ego at all. So, you know, they'll make a car, and if you come in and say, Hey, I'd like to make some changes, they would get excited about that. Yeah. They wouldn't feel like you were criticizing them. They would be like, neat, let's change it.

Pete 51:14

Yeah. And that's kind of cool. That's that's rare. That's rare in that industry. Um, okay, so the other part that I want to talk about. Wait, we we already kind of covered the dark ride thing. I don't want to delve too much. We we all know what a dark ride is. Yeah. The thing I do want to cover is the interesting fact that we go to hell.

Kelly 51:32

And here's my Which is truly the thing that most people remember about the Yeah, at the end, you die. This month at Boardwalk Times, editor-in-chief Zach Perelstein has been recapping his experiences at the theme park industry's biggest yearly event, Ayapa. And new contributor, Kyle Sulagi, explores what lessons might be learned by Moana 2's spectacular success and why they might be the wrong ones. Come check it all out at BoardwalkTimes.net. And here's my Which is truly the thing that most people remember about the Yeah, at the end, you die.

Pete 52:25

Right. Like there are two Disneyland rides in which you actually die. One has been totally confirmed, one is still kind of speculative. Oh, which is that? The Haunted Mansion. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um I had a conversation. Lucky me, I got to go to lunch with Tony Baxter and Mr. Tim O'Day. Thanks to Mr. O'Day. And during that conversation, I actually said, I've always speculated and I wanted to ask you, uh, do you die on the Haunted Mansion? He goes, Oh, absolutely. You get pushed out the window by the bride. That's why the Doom buggy turns backwards and is going downhill. It's simulating you falling in slow motion out the window. And so it's supposed to give you the impression that you have been pushed out the window and you fall to your death and you land right outside the graveyard, and for a moment you have an out-of-body experience. Neat. Where you are going through the graveyard going, This is what awaits you. But when you go back with the hitchhiking ghosts, it's the moment of I'm back in my body again. Okay, time to go home, but you know, beware of hitchhiking ghosts. Right. So you're still touched by them. Like that's why you can see them in the mirror with you, is that you're still in that mid-re mid-range of live or dead. And I thought, that's brilliant. That's that's actually great. But that's never been like the official word. But also, that's that's Tony Baxter's interpretation. That's Tony, yeah. It's and it's kind of my interpretation. That's what I like to have with that.

Kelly 53:51

Oh, let me let me ask you, maybe you know this, and I I can confirm it later if you don't, but was Baxter Claude Coates' apprentice? Was that the relationship? I believe he was.

Pete 54:04

Okay I thought I heard that. And and that would make sense again, because of Claude's sensibilities and Tony's very much overlap. Yeah. And also their artistic abilities overlap a lot. So that would make perfect sense. Yeah. And if they weren't, we'll we'll be happy to correct it. But I I believe you are correct in that. So this notion of hell, going to hell, this is the ride that is definitely confirmed. You get hit by a train. Oh, yeah, and you die, and you go to hell.

Kelly 54:31

And the devil, which looks a lot like the barrister, uh and that was added, um, like the original ride through it was just demons, and then they added the the barrister devil. Yeah. And then the last iteration, they added dragon that looks like he's about to breathe fire, but then just coughs.

Pete 54:51

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The imps are there, all these marvelous little details. Um going to hell has been a pursuit in in themed entertainment for people for a long, long time. There's a long tradition. And so when people say, Oh, it's the first time you go to hell on a ride, not true. This tradition of entertainment in which you are dealing with the infernal goes as far back as I can tell, and it probably even goes back even further, but it actually has its origins in the Middle Ages. Uh, with mystery plays. Yeah. Uh these these plays that are kind of morality plays that usually are a way to proselytize and bring people over into the fold of the Catholic Church. Yeah. In order to show you that the torments of hell are terrible, but as long as you are free and able to accept Christ as your Savior, there you are. You can you can join in. And the mystery plays were usually performed on a small traveling stage with uh a mouth of hell backdrop with the seven deadly sins printed upon it, and they would perform all these plays on it. Yeah. It's a fascinating uh play format, but when it becomes an entertainment, it goes beyond just frankly, the mystery plays are more like propaganda. Yeah. But when it becomes an actual entertainment, this happens in France during the Belle Epoque era.

Kelly 56:10

Okay.

Pete 56:10

So this is when all the great Bohemian artists, the impressionists like um Toulouse Latrec and Henri Matisse and all these other people are milling around and being Bohemians. Yeah. On the Montmart, not too far from the Moulin Rouge, there was a two-story building that had a huge mouth, demon mouth, that you could walk through to enter. And it was the Cafe L'Enfer, the Cafe of Hell. And you entered into the mouth of this demon, and they had all these devils with pitchforks and stuff festooned all on the outside.

Kelly 56:42

I've heard about this before. This is familiar to me, but I can't think of why.

Pete 56:46

It's probably one of my conversations with you. Because I'm fascinated by Parisian entertainments like this. This is one of my one of my favorite you know things. There there was a lot of these entertainments, so they were they were built for and by the bourgeoisie. So these were entertainments for people who were of the middle and upper middle class of Parisian life when they wanted to feel like they were slumming it. Yeah. But do it in this safe manner. Right. So they would come to the red light district, which is essentially where the Montmart was. Yeah. Uh this is also where the Grand Guignol existed in late 1880s and lasting uh into the uh 1960s, yeah. Finally shutting down 1963. Uh but the um the Cafe L'Enfer, you would go in and people were dressed as devils. Yeah. You know, m more like Mephistopheles than say uh John Lovett's in a red sweatpants outfit. Yeah. But still, they were they would and they would, you know, call you sinners, and you would be, you know, and they they wafted out this scent of sulfur, and you went to this underground manufactured cavern with these devils looking down onto you, and they turned up the heat, so it was always extra warm in there, and which was a bonus, especially in the winter for Parisians who are like walking home, they're a little drunk for too much absinthe and can-can dancing at the Moulin Rouge. Let's go to the Cafe L'Enfer. I'm cold, you know. Like, let's let's go burn in hell for a little bit, you know?

Kelly 58:09

Which they also did, of course, with uh the last scene in Mr. Toad. They ended up you know, post that would be Tony Boxter, like turning it up in 1983 turned up the heat in that room.

Pete 58:19

Absolutely. And we and there is the slight pungent smell of burning in that room. Yeah. A little bit of sulfur and a little bit of like burning wood. You kind of go, wait a minute, that's kind of cool. Uh and and the Cafe L'enfer was uh interesting uh to a degree because it really dipped into Parisians' love for the macabre. Yes. Uh in a future episode, we will eventually do the Haunted Mansion.

Kelly 58:46

Yeah.

Pete 58:46

And we gotta work up to it. And we are working up to it because that that is such a Mondo Bafo thing, and everybody everybody knows everything about it, so we're trying to find a way out of deep dive. Yeah. But part of my deep dive, I'm already going to kind of give you a little preview, is talking about some of the competition of the Cafe L'Enfer. Yeah. In which there were other cafes that did macabre things, and I'm just gonna leave it there. Okay. Uh, because if I do anything more, I'll just totally go down the rabbit hole. Right. Uh or the toad hole, toad in the hole, if this is the word. Um but there is another entertainment that comes out roughly about the same time in San Francisco.

Kelly 59:21

Okay.

Pete 59:21

In 1896, they had the Midwinter Fair. Yeah. And there are photographs of the exterior of this place, but no photographs of the interior. Okay. And it was a ride that was just called the Inferno. Dante's Inferno. Uh-huh. And it's this humongous demonic head with the I mean, really big, yeah. Demonic head with these bat wings sticking out the side, and you had to crawl underneath the teeth in order to get swallowed by this demon. Uh-huh. And they had all of these dioramas of scenes of devilish torture based a lot on these uh stereograph cards that were very popular at the time called Les Diableries. Now, let me explain what the Les Diableries is. There was a form of uh basically 3D photography called stereography. Uh-huh. And it's basically two lenses and a prism on the inside of the camera that splits it so that way they are the exact proportionate distance as the human eye. Yeah. Thus, when you take a picture, you're actually taking two photographs just slightly left or right from each other. And if you look through a special viewer and you adjust it through some lenses, it will actually give you the illusion that you're looking at a 3D image. Yeah. And stereography goes back to the 1870s. There are pictures of the Civil War in stereoscopes. So you know, it's really amazing. Actually, it's older than the 1870s. It goes back to the Civil War era. Have you heard this as a quick aside?

Kelly 1:00:51

Um uh Brian May.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:55

You beat me to it.

Kelly 1:00:56

Yeah, the guitar player from Queen, like put out a book of vintage stereoscopes and built, like designed and built a stereoscope to go in the book.

Pete 1:01:07

Yep. I own a copy of it. It's a fabulous. Do you? Yeah, Dr. Brian May's Diablo. You gotta come over. I I will. I will totally bring it over. It's a lot of fun. Um and they would do other things like they would tint the Oh, okay. So let me explain what the Diablo actually are. Yes. So the Diablo were produced, it's a whole series of these stereoscopic cards. Most of the time, they were just photographs from around the world or of famous people as a way for people to say, Oh, that's what Pompeii looks like. Oh, that's what Venice looks like, or that's what this world's fair in Paris looks like. The Diablerie are unique in which they are very much the great-grandfather of not the Etches sketch, the Viewmaster. The View Master. The View Master. They're the Viewmaster. Uh, because there were three artists all working independently, they were competitors, and they built these large, elaborate scenes out of clay and wood and paper mache of devils and skeletons in different macabre and humorous uh poses and situations. Yeah. Like the library of the devil, and there's all these skeletons reading books, and there's a devil whipping one with a copy of some sort of feminist novel. Seriously, there was a lot of political commentary, a lot of it aimed at Napoleon III. Yeah. Um, and then some are more humorous than others. The most prolific of these artists uh produced well over 170 of these things, but none of these models exist. They were built to be photographed and destroyed. And destroyed, yeah. And that was it. Obviously, it's very obvious that he made molds of these skeletons and pressed clay into them and pulled them out and then posed them how he wanted to and just let them sit. Right. And he may have recycled some of the skeletons, but he made these very elaborate, beautiful girls that he would hand sculpt and then just destroy them.

Kelly 1:02:59

No.

Pete 1:03:00

Because to him it was industrial waste. It's like I don't have room in my studio to keep all this stuff, so he would get rid of it. And they're fat I used to own about a dozen of these things when I was a kid. They got destroyed in the Loma Prieta earthquake, sadly. Uh, but they they were fascinating. Uh and I had one that was even better, which is related to Claude Coates' UV paints, in which these artists figured out that if you paint the right or just the left side and you painted the eyes with a brilliant red dye, it would make the eyes vibrate and protrude as if there's a glowing red eye staring at you from these skeletons. And uh Dr. Brian May, because he is an astrophysicist. Astrophysicist, yeah. Uh he uh actually publishes both the black and white and the hand-tinted versions in this book. So if you can get your hands on Les Diableries, edited by Brian May, it is well worth it. There's a couple of other authors who worked on it, but he's the major contributor to it. Uh and it comes with an owl, it comes with a viewer that you can actually look at these things in stereo, and they're incredible. Oh, that's so neat. So, this attraction, Dante's Inferno at the Midwinter Fair, based a lot of their scenes off of Les Diablerie. And so they made it look just so you were walking through a stereoscopic thing, but you lots of forced perspective, lots of little automaton, very simple movements, almost like um whirly gigs where the devil's being you know whipped, yeah, and and you were stepping through all these different little scenes of hell. Huh. And apparently it was like one of the biggest sellers at the Midwinter Fair, um, along with the War of the Worlds ride in the exact same place where they built a ride base. We talked about that. We did, yeah, yeah. Um, but unfortunately, I've only seen photographs of the exterior of this thing, and I I fell in love with it. I went, I might I have to see this. Right. Problem was it only lasted for several months and then it burned down because one of the special effects that they hadn't quite figured out yet was how to make realistic-looking artificial fire. Yeah. So the entire attraction was rigged with gas panels that would actually have flames in front of the dioramas. Oh so you were looking at these dioramas through an actual curtain of flame. Yikes. And unfortunately, it burned down tragically. So we have no record currently. Maybe somebody out there has one. If you do and you're listening, please send us a photograph. I would die to see what the interior, at least one part of this would be great. Right. But um, but some of that notion of uh they would also have sulfur very much like the Cafe L'Enfer.

Kelly 1:05:39

Yeah.

Pete 1:05:39

Uh you were stepping into hell. And people would come out, you know, smoking and having a great time and you know, coughing away. And uh and of course, you have a a lot of tradition of this infernal entertainment in a lot of dark rides, like on Coney Island, uh in Salt Lake City. Amusement park, pier, you know, all of them, they all tend to have this type of dark, morbid approach. And at some point, something infernal is going to happen. And this grows very, very popular throughout the Prohibition era. Oh, I bet. Because you've got people like the Salvation Army, and you have the Prohibition movement basically saying, Oh, don't drink the devil's urine. You've got to, you know, you know, that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of, you know, be good and don't, you know, don't misbehave or you're going to go to hell. Yeah. And then it just goes away. Yeah. It just vanishes this type of approach to amusements, except for Mr. Toad's wild ride. And I would actually make the argument that with a couple of exceptions, perhaps in like um uh virtual reality rides or uh or not necessarily virtual reality rides, but rides like you know, projected motion rides, like Star Tours, right? Uh there's not many out there that actually take you to hell. No. Not not like this. And I I would make the argument that Mr. Toads is kind of the last of that movement. Yeah. Yeah, that starts with the Cafe L'Amfleur and it ends here at Mr. Toad's Wild Ride of all things. Which is a ride for children.

Kelly 1:07:15

Right. Which it's still still going on. I was gonna mention real quick, uh there's a book, it's a really great book I read a couple of years ago, uh, by Elizabeth Hand called Curious Toys. Yeah. And it's set entirely around a sort of tunnel of love that has like d demons and Satan and stuff, and it's and it's a book where uh Henry Darger is a character who helps someone solve a murder. Wow. But it's interesting because they go into a lot of detail of how the uh ride works and how the demons work and stuff. It's really neat if you're cool.

Pete 1:07:51

That's really, really cool. So that's my that's my deep dive uh of of uh in uh in the history books.

Kelly 1:07:58

I th I think you've got a really good point here because it is very much of that tradition. Yeah. The the end to this thing. And and I, you know, I'm trying I started to do the math in my head. I was like, the guys who designed this, when did they grow up? Uh-huh. And it would have been in the 30s. Sure. Yeah. So I'm like, is that when they would have seen attractions like this? They would have seen it.

Pete 1:08:23

They probably would have actually seen uh, you know, uh oh, there we talked about monkey races too. Oh, yeah. For hot topia, right? We talked about those. That's the same tradition uh of uh of auto automobiles. And there was a fear and a hysteria of automobiles. Oh, yeah. And also a mystique about them. I mean, for goodness sakes, uh not long after they were actually killed, Bonnie and Clyde's car was taken around the country as a sideshow attraction, uh, with all the bullet holes, like 150 or whatever bullet holes are riddled with it.

Kelly 1:08:55

It's still in a museum in Vegas, isn't it?

Pete 1:08:57

It is now, yeah. It is finally it has finally come. I've seen it in person. It's it's really gruesome. Yeah. It's it is Swiss cheese. I'm not joking. Like there are so many holes in this. It's like, yeah, nothing's coming out of that. Right. Right? Um, but yeah, this this fear of and it's also kind of a warning. Like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is like a it's almost like a demented companion piece to Autopia. Like, hey kids, you get to drive, but this time if you misbehave behind the wheel, you're gonna burn in hell. You know, right? It's like uh so I wonder if Bob Gurney's saying that too, you know?

Kelly 1:09:32

Yeah, it's it's so interesting because you know it's it's such an unusual ending. It has nothing to do at all with the source material. I I can't think of any Well, I mean, I guess there's the like the Star Wars stuff currently that that diverges, but it certainly anything that has to do with like classic Disney films or the fantasy side of Disney that that goes that far south from its own source material.

Pete 1:09:54

Oh yeah. I mean it's uh but there's nothing more magical when I was a kid than like Autopia was fine. Yeah. And I enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah. But I actually enjoyed getting behind the wheel of Mr. Toad or Ratty or Cyril or Winky. Winky or one of those cars. And I think it was just the whimsical nature of it. It was almost like, no, this car is definitely built for a kid. Yeah. Oh yeah. And uh the thing that always bugged me is that unlike Autopia, which is now was even when I was a kid, was on a track. Yeah, there's no actual steering of this thing. Oh no, it doesn't do anything. But just about every kid that gets on it is like swinging that thing around and steering it. I do it. I do it too. I pretend to be steering it. I go with the story. It's like I'm Toad for the next minute and 30 seconds. I'm gonna be Mr. Toad. Yeah. This is his wild ride. I'm gonna have a wild ride. I pretend. And I freak, I mean, it's it's make believe. And I I have a tradition of I mean, you saw me we were riding out like when the trains come and try, you're like, no! Oh, totally. You know, there's the sheep and there's the farmer, the sheep farmer. Oh, look out.

Kelly 1:11:00

You know, yeah. So it's such a that train effect is so good too. Like the train effect and the effect, the effect where you turn into the mirror and so you see your own headlights coming towards you.

Pete 1:11:11

Yeah. So smart. It's really fun. I mean, what I love is that also uh that ride could be considered the grandfather of another Disney attraction with a very similar effect, in which you are driving a car, not really, but kinda, yeah, and something is about to hit you. Which is you can actually see the kind of the beginnings of the thinking of the illusion of the giant boulder in the Indiana Jones ride. Oh, huh. In the train. It's just a red, you know, a big white light and two red lights on either side, and the sound of a train on a track that's going overhead slowly as you're going towards it. So it makes it seem even faster.

Kelly 1:11:48

Which does a similar thing. It just kind of you assume that something bad has happened and it swings you out of the way, which is exactly what happens on indie. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Pete 1:11:56

Right. And a lot all that's missing with indie is the giant room with boom crash and the giant cartoon expletives and onomatopoeia everywhere. You know. But you know, tourists, why do you have to be tourists? You know, and I mean it's it's really delightful. Um and there's a lot of great effects. I mean, the the the the cutouts of the barrister, thank you, that is all. Yeah. You know, Mr. Winky. Yeah, and Mr. Winky with the spinning beers flying as he's ducking out of the way, and the weasels on the chandelier, and Moli on the you know, all these they're so simple. Yeah, and ridiculously simple.

Kelly 1:12:33

And you know, it's interesting because there's a lot of similarity between this attraction and Roger Rabbit's cartoon spin. Oh, yeah. Which is also an out-of-control car.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:42

Yes, it is.

Kelly 1:12:42

Yeah. I I I would argue that this is a little more successful than that. I agree. Um I and I like Roger Rabbit, don't get me wrong. Weirdly, even though you can spin the Roger Rabbit car in circles, I find Mr. Toad feels more chaotic.

Pete 1:12:58

Yeah. Well, one of my favorite effects is one of the dumbest things ever. Yeah. And I don't know why I love this thing so much, but it's that extra little touch that just grounds you into the reality of it. So there's a portion not long before the train accident where you're driving towards you're you're driving along the waterfront. Yeah. And you've got these these crates hanging overhead, yeah, you know, uh hung overhead with rope. Yeah. But as you're on the waterfront, your car starts to rattle a lot because they've actually put stuff underneath the wheel, so it really does actually uh and you're on the boardwalk. Right. And it's as you're riding. And it just adds to that reality of, oh, we're on the boardwalk. That's cool. And then you veer off. It's the stupid dumbest thing, but it works. It's so fun. It makes me giggle every time.

Kelly 1:13:49

It is it is a physical way to do what they did in Indiana Jones with a lot more technology. Yeah. Um, and it's it's no i i it is not any worse of an effect. It works really well. Before we kind of drive to hell, we should talk about the slight difference in the Walt Disney World version of this ride. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Pete 1:14:11

You mean besides the fact that one still exists?

Kelly 1:14:14

Well, there is that. You know, and I think I think there's an interesting point there because so mi Mr. Toad is not a property that a lot of people know other than the ride. Yes. Right? They know about it from the ride. I I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone uh very many people under our age that have even seen the movie.

Pete 1:14:39

I have had students, I've had my animation students at a couple of my colleges where I teach, I have had them actually say, You mean there's a cartoon of it? Right. Yeah. Uh no, the cartoon came first. Really? Yes. You know, and you have to show it to them.

Kelly 1:14:53

And it and so it's interesting, so then they replace the one in Florida with uh many adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which I understand the thinking, Winnie the Pooh is probably the most popular character that Disney owns universally, like uh across the globe. Or at least it he was for a time. Yeah. Uh so I get it. And people do know that source material. They know the books, they've seen the movies, they've seen TV shows.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:19

Yeah.

Kelly 1:15:19

And yet that ride, both in the Florida version and the one in California that is now in the area called By Bayou Country, as of this last week, there's no line ever. Like they're they run half empty all the time. Yeah. Pooh is by far more care uh more popular character than Mr. Toad, but Mr. Toad has a line always.

Pete 1:15:44

Always. Always. It's incredibly popular.

Kelly 1:15:46

So I think I just think that's a it's an interesting thing to think about. Like you the character that people don't need to know the intellectual property of is a more popular ride.

Pete 1:15:57

I agree. I agree. Anytime that I see Mr. Toad merchandise, and I know I'm biased because I love the cartoon and I love the ride, yeah, and I love my dog, I will snap it up. Yeah. I and many fans of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride in Florida were extremely upset when they shut it down. And there was a whole movement there. I mean, I signed the position.

Kelly 1:16:20

Yeah. It was probably the first time that Disney actually seemed to feel shocked by the backlash. Oh yeah. Um it didn't change anything, but No.

Pete 1:16:30

But it did make them pause for like 30 seconds. Yeah.

Kelly 1:16:34

And it put them in a position where they made it mean something a little bit more. They let people show up and, you know, wear their save Mr. Toad things. And and they they made sure people got to ride it. And they knew that it was important to people. Yeah. One of the interesting things about the Florida version that and and this also is interesting too, because you know, it's she ostensibly you shut it down because it's not popular. But when it opened, there's actually two tracks in the Florida version. Yeah. So you could do two different toad rides. Whoa. There was a left track and a right track. And the reason for that is that Mr. Toad was notoriously low throughput for people. Sure. You know, you you could get about 700 people an hour top. It was so popular in California when they opened it in Florida, they said, well, let's just make two. They share some scenes. Yeah. So you you know, you would go if you were on the right track, you'd see a scene from one angle, and you're on the left track, you'd see a scene from another angle. They also had scenes that were completely unique to each track.

Pete 1:17:38

Oh so that kills me.

Kelly 1:17:42

Yeah, so it you could ride it twice and and see different things.

Pete 1:17:46

See, that I miss. Yeah. That that really because I never actually got to see the Florida one. Yeah. Never actually got to ride it. I I when I went, the Winnie the Pooh ride had already been put in. I did do it, but I have very little memory of it. Yeah. I was very young. Yeah. I think Mr. Toad's Riled Ride has some advantages over a lot of its fantasyland counterparts. Yeah. The ride kind of transcends the original IP to the point where audience members go, well, like like my students, you mean there was a movie before this? Right. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's one of its advantages. Mr. Toad is its own little slice. Like, I don't remember this. Yeah. Oh, let's see what happens. So you you really do get surprised by what's going to happen. Like, wait a minute, we went to hell? Yeah. Wait, that's not that. And you like you constantly see people laughing because I think it's that bewilderment of like, wait a minute, this was supposed to be a kid's ride, and all of a sudden I'm in hell. Yeah. Like, that's insane. People come out of that ride with such joy on their face. They really do. Yeah. And I do every time. I unfortunately, uh, I got really badly injured on it one time. Oh no. Yeah, I got rear-ended because the brakes on the ride behind me and the car behind me did not work. So I actually got whiplash on Mr. Toe's wild ride. Oh no. Yeah. Um the park was very nice about it. They they took care of us. Um they were very apologetic because they knew it was an accident. So they were they were giving us the no, no, we're gonna take you over to first aid, make sure you're okay. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we got a lot of a lot of goodies as you know, please don't sue us. And and and but I I had I couldn't ride a lot of my favorite rides for the rest of that trip because my neck was just so messed up and my poor chiropractor had to work on me for months. Oh but I that doesn't take away my love for it. It was just an accident, you know. Yeah, but even then, I I still rode it a couple more times. Like the poor ride operator saw me coming, they're like, Oh no, are you sure you want to come back on us? I'm like, Yeah, I still love the ride. It was just an accident. Let's go. It's not gonna happen again. And I come out, I love this ride. This is great, you know. Wee. And it's you know, yeah, sometimes you have to wait 15, 20 minutes to get on it. Which is fine. It's fine. It's not Peter Pan where you're waiting three hours. Yeah. But it's still fun, you know. So I think now, uh with that in mind, I think we need to move on to the next part of our show, the last part of our show, uh, in which we plus it up. Yes.

Kelly 1:20:18

And as I recall, last time I I went first. So I'm now going to graciously allow you to. Graciously.

Pete 1:20:27

Hey, she says it with such venom. That's the part that I like. Uh okay. So um little anecdote before I I tell my plus out there. Yes. The anecdote was is that there is a ride that we really don't have to go very deep into uh that was produced at Disney's California Adventure. Okay. And I don't even remember the name of it, it was that memorable. But basically, it was part of the Hollywood experience, and it was like you were riding in a limousine. Oh, Superstar Limo. Superstar Limo. Okay.

Kelly 1:21:04

The the most hated ride in the history of Disney rides.

Pete 1:21:07

Oh, yes, absolutely. I actually had a notion uh right when uh Euro Disney, aka Disneyland Paris, first opened, yeah, and there were protests and people did not like it, and it was going through a lot of headaches at that time. Yeah. And I had actually designed this in college as a prank with my teacher because I had actually uh done a senior project in which I designed a ride based off of the Sword and the Stone as my graduate project. Okay. But as a prank, I designed a ride called Michael Eisner's Wild Ride. And you drove around in a kind of uh Benny the Cab Mercedes-Benz, and the whole thing would be like his trials and tribulations as the CEO of of Disney. And so you go through like a couple of like yes men or like, welcome to Disney, Mr.

Kelly 1:22:04

Eisner, and you go through the double doors and that's actually if you watch ride-throughs of Superstar Limo, that's kind of what it's like. It kind of is.

Pete 1:22:13

So yeah, but but also like you know, you have uh you there's a scene in which you're driving through the streets of Paris and you've got all these you know flat, you know, black-lit Parisians going, ah, Americans go home. We don't like the Mickey Murray. Yeah, they're throwing tomatoes, and then you see the Eiffel Tower falling down, you know, all this kind of stuff. You turn another corner and all of a sudden you're a hockey puck at a mighty ducks, you know, game and stuff. It was you know, it's a total, total goof on it. But I think a plus up, it's this is one of those rides where do we really need to do something to this? I don't know. Yeah, it's tough, right? It's tough. Like I I I love the the two-dimensionality of it and theakiness of it. But my plus up actually has something to do with two things that were mentioned earlier in this uh broad this particular uh episode. Uh I was about to say broadcast, but won't actually broadcast. Man am I a child from the 1980s, in which we mix berry tales a little bit with the two-track notion of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride in Florida. Okay. In which one of the cars is for the Keystone cops, and the other one is Toad. In which you have two tracks in which you actually try to catch Mr. Toad. So this is an excellent opportunity for you to put your kid in one car and you're chasing after him or the other way around. That's great. So and but it would actually not just be a dark ride. There would actually have a couple of moments where the track actually gets uh less controlled, and it's not necessarily super fast, but like the radiator springs racers, it would be a little bit just a couple of little dips here and there. So you've got those notions of speed, but it would feel a little bit like a race where you're trying to catch Mr. Toad. Yeah. And I think that would be a lot of fun. And so that that's all I can really think of. It would it would still have the same flavor, still have that two-dimension approach. You still wind up, you know, one definitely winds up in hell. Yes. And I don't know what would happen to the cops, but I maybe I don't want to offend any law enforcement people out there by saying the cops are the ones that go to hell, but you know, but maybe you both do. I don't know. Everyone wants to end up in hell. I think what would actually be kind of great is like the ending is you actually are racing toward each other. And so the actual smack is this like this really quick 180 degrees, and there's an explosion between the two of you going blah blah blah blah blah blah, you know, bam o like there's a scrim behind you, and you actually have one of those, you know, one-way, two-way scrims, so you actually see bam and crash, and you're actually rushing toward each other like the mirror effect at Mr. Toad, but you're actually going, Oh my god, we're really gonna crash. And then then you both drive through hell. Yeah. Now I think that would keep it equal. But you know, it's like so that's that's my very brief, but but still lovingly, it's like my oatmeal cookie plus up. It's not really fancy, but it still gets the job done. I I I like that.

Kelly 1:25:13

I think that would be really cool. I love the actual like one car chasing the other idea. That's so neat. Um, and yes, you could just smack into each other and end up in hell. Like you do. Yeah, like like any time that you challenge the law. So I think my plus up I'm I'm I'm kind of in the same boat with you, where there's something about the ride, and we've talked about it, yeah, that is so much like an older style of ride, and that is part of its appeal. Yes. That I don't want to change that. I don't want to fancy it up. But what if you're doing the ride and the car escapes the building and it becomes a little bit more of a roller coaster kind of thing. So you're going through, you're doing all the ride, somehow you burst out of the building, and the car is going through fantasyland.

Pete 1:26:15

Oh, I love that. So it's like uh up in the air. Mr. Toad's rocket racers. Yes. Boy, this time the track will work. Yes. Yes.

Kelly 1:26:26

You get two advantages here. You get one thing that the the ride gets even wilder because you're now up and down in fantasyland. And for the people not on the ride, they're seeing Mr. Toad's car flying around. Yeah. Which is cool. It gives it motion, it gives dimension to the land itself. And then, of course, by the end, you have some sort of arc up, maybe over the top of Alice in Wonderland, and you come back down into the ride, into hell. I love that. Which is where it's got to end.

Pete 1:26:57

I love that. Yeah, again, this ride is so simple that like plussing it up almost seems like a travesty. But I think I think yours actually adds some fun to it. You know, like you almost want to have like run into Toad in his little right flyer, you know. Yes. Come on, you fellows, you know, it's like flying overhead, you know. Like that'd be fun. I love that. I love that notion.

Kelly 1:27:19

Yeah, and I I just I love the idea of rides that actually can add something to the land as a whole. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and contribute to that. You know, we've seen with the disillusion of Tomorrowland how all of the things that made it Tomorrowland have just slowly been picked away. So you walk in and you don't see anything moving anymore.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:41

Yeah.

Kelly 1:27:41

Um I mean you see the monorail sometimes, but you don't have that whole sense of this is a a community, this is bound together by things. Right. There's no kinetic energy of it at all. Exactly. And so it'd be nice to get something like that in Fantasyland where it's like, yeah, this is bound together because you're doing All these adventures and toads just going crazy running all around.

Pete 1:28:04

I love that. Yeah. I love that notion. Before we do a sign-off, I do want to bring something up and ask a favor of our listeners. Uh-huh. There have been many of you who have been downloading us, whether it be on Spotify, whether it be on Apple Podcasts or YouTube, well, all three of you. And uh but that brings me to my point. If you enjoy this podcast, one of the things we've noticed is that once you start listening, you guys keep coming back. And we want to really appreciate it. Yeah, we wanted to thank you for that. Yeah. But we also want to ask a favor. If you could do us a favor and spread the word about this show to some of your fellow Disney fanatics and say, hey, you know what? This Pete and Kelly are actually, or Kelly and Pete, I don't want to be biased, would are actually really, really fun to listen to. I have actually grown a cult of my students who are now listening in on, so I now have really have to watch what I say. Yeah. If you could take a chance and leave a review, spread the word, post about us on Instagram or your other fave, you know, insert your favorite social media platform here. We would really, really appreciate it because the more people who are listening, the more eccentric we get. And right. And it just we're doing this for fun and we love this, but we really think that building a community through this type of deep dive and plus up is a a really fun opportunity to uh have fun and meet new people. And we already have some amazing people, met some amazing people just through this podcast. Yeah, we want to meet you.

Kelly 1:29:33

We sure have. And and thank you for bringing that up, Pete. I I totally agree. I think I think doing this podcast is about trying to create some community. It's been so great to interact with some of you, and we notice that people, once they jump on board, they stay on board, which is wonderful. We we'd love to grow the community a little larger.

Pete 1:29:50

Absolutely. So please spread the word. Yeah. So until that happens, for now, I'm Peter Overstreet. And I'm Kelly McGubbin. And you've been listening to The Lowdown on the Plus Up.

Kelly 1:30:17

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Lowdown on the Plus Up. If you have, please tell your friends where you found us. And if you haven't, we can pretend this never happened and need not speak of it again. For a lot more thoughts on theme parks and related stuff, check out my writing for Boardwalk Times at Boardwalk Times.net. Feel free to reach out to Pete and I on our Lowdown on the Plus Up Facebook group or send us a message directly at comments at lowdown-plus-up.com. We really want to hear about how you'd plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Our theme music is Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy by Kevin McLeod at Incompatech dot com. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why? Because we like you.