Speaker 1: 0:01

Our next adventure awaits us in Tomorrowland. This fantastic world of the future is just a few steps across the plaza from the worlds of yesterday and today, and as we enter Tomorrowland's famous world clock shows the exact time for any place on Earth.

Speaker 4: 0:19

Thank you, 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. So, pete, what are we?

Speaker 5: 1:36

talking about today. Well, we're going to talk about a subject that a lot of us fans of Disneyland have close to our hearts but I think we're afraid to talk about it a lot which is about the part of the park that we all love and yet not a lot of us actually go to anymore, for a variety of reasons. It's usually at the bottom of our list. We go oh yeah, we should go there, but it wasn't always like that.

Speaker 5: 2:00

Yes that's right, it wasn't. We all do have a love and respect. You and I were in the park. We were wandering around, we're going to New Orleans Square, having a great time, and then we went. Maybe we should go to this place. We really should.

Speaker 4: 2:13

Before we do a show about it in like three hours.

Speaker 5: 2:15

Right, yeah, maybe we should actually go. And then we realized how sad that realization was, and the part of the park that we're going to talk about today is Tomorrowland.

Speaker 4: 2:25

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Speaker 5: 2:28

Yes, Tomorrowland, which these days a lot of people, including people at Imagineering and at Disney Corporate and this has been going on for decades have been perplexed of what to do about it. Yeah, there are many iterations at the many different parks all over the world. We're going to be focused on the original, the park here at Disneyland. We are actually recording this episode, yes, in the Suite of the Future at Howard Johnson's Hotel in Anaheim, california, the Suite of the Retro Future with an actual, an actual yes.

Speaker 4: 3:04

Paul Barry of Winds of the Magic fame.

Speaker 6: 3:07

The house of the Retro Future suite inspired by the former Disneyland attraction Monsanto's Plastics Home of the Future. Unquote.

Speaker 4: 3:19

Okay so the suite of the Retro Adventureland tree inspired by the Swiss family spaceman. I'm going to hit you. You wouldn't like him when he's angry. No, but anyway. So, and we're here with a bunch of friends. Hello Say, hello everybody. It's our first live audience. This is so cool. People from all over the country came in to basically visit our friend Paul of Winter, to the Magic fame, and he allowed us to do this while they were here, which is amazing. So we're so glad to be here and so glad you're all here with us.

Speaker 5: 4:03

Absolutely. We will be doing plugs of all of their various podcasts and podcasters at the end of the show. Yes, because they're all so awesome for being here and allowing us to record the show here tonight. So, and they're here as our guests. We've just finished dinner eating off of plastic TV dinner trays, eating fabulous TV dinners and drinking very bad for us sodas, and listening to retrofuturistic music and having a ball, and we haven't even begun recording the episode. So this is pretty great. Wait, we haven't. Oh geez, we better turn on the machine. No, no, we've had a great time so far, so hopefully now it's Kelly's my turn to actually entertain the room.

Speaker 7: 4:43

Let me real quick.

Speaker 4: 4:44

Take a tenor of the audience yes, be flat. So I mean, we're all theme park fans, we all love Disneyland, we all love like Rise of the Resistance. Yes, yes, we all love it. Now, how many people in this room would be willing to burn that thing to the ground to get the people mover back? Yes, these are our people. There's a lot of hands going up.

Speaker 5: 5:10

A lot of hands went up on that one. That's great.

Speaker 4: 5:14

Yeah that's Now I know what we're playing to Right on.

Speaker 5: 5:19

So here's. This is the reason that this subject came up. Kelly and I have been putting this off for some time, because this was actually one of the first episodes we really talked about doing, and then we did our first episode, which was about Mr Lincoln. Yes, right. Great moments with Mr Lincoln.

Speaker 5: 5:36

Great moments with Mr Lincoln, which was a very fun episode, and again, I have to pat ourselves on the back a little bit. We actually kind of predicted what they're doing to it, which I'm very happy about. So check out the dates, folks. It's actually on there.

Speaker 4: 5:51

But that was my mighty crucial moment you make it sound like the Kennedy assassination.

Speaker 5: 5:56

There's a conspiracy, I tell you. Well, I mean, there's that whole Kennedy-Lincoln conspiracy, crossover thing oh yeah with the three-letter thing.

Speaker 5: 6:03

Yeah, exactly so. Lincoln Conspiracy crossover oh yeah, with the three-letter thing. Yeah, exactly so. Now we're going to have to get to Walt, right, but he's gone so we don't have to worry about it. So, anyway, but this was the first episode that we discussed doing and then we realized it's too big. It's too big of a subject to really take on yet, and it took us a while to figure it out. And I think it came when Kelly and I first came down and we met Paul and had a great walkthrough with him, and then we were walking around in Tomorrowland and we suddenly realized nothing was moving. The people were walking around, but there was no people mover. The Orbitron was down. There was no rocket racers.

Speaker 5: 6:39

Yeah rocket rods, yeah, rocket rods. There was nothing, nothing was moving, nothing was kinetic, and it was like wait a minute, that's not the way this is supposed to be.

Speaker 4: 6:48

So this leads into something that I kind of wanted to suggest early on. Yeah, I think the single most magical thing that happened at Disneyland ever happened in 1961. And I'll tell you what that thing is. It's the only time that I know of that. An attraction escaped the park. The monorail was built originally to travel solely inside the park as a demonstration of commuter transport. In 1961, the monorail escaped the park and formed actual transport that was useful for people to the Disneyland Hotel, and that may not seem like much, but I think it really speaks to a lot of how we feel about Tomorrowland. Tomorrowland, I would argue, is not a science fiction land, or at least it wasn't intended to be originally what it was was. It was intended to look towards progress, it was intended to demonstrate new things, and in this one case, in 1961, a ride actually became the thing it was demonstrating, and I think that sort of serves as where I plant my flag for Tomorrowland. Like this is what Tomorrowland's about.

Speaker 5: 8:16

And Bob Gurr driving off with Richard Nixon. That's right.

Speaker 7: 8:20

Hang on, tricky Dick, let's go. Thanks Bob. Hang on, tricky Dick, let's go.

Speaker 4: 8:25

Thanks, Bob, that's right. Yeah, they had run the monorail exactly one full time before it actually was premiered and it went one full time around the track and then Richard Nixon got in.

Speaker 5: 8:39

Without his security. Yeah, they weren't happy Bob's like I've kidnapped the president of the United States. And the Tomorrowland that we're going to really go into. I mean we're going to give like a little brief, because there's like different eras of Tomorrowland. There's like different sections that we refer to as like the birth of it, and then there's the revitalization of it, which is roughly around 1958. Then there's the big Tencential unveiling of a lot of what we know of Tomorrowland and what we think of.

Speaker 4: 9:07

Well, there's like New Tomorrowland, which is like 1967. Correct?

Speaker 5: 9:10

Yeah, and then there's New, new Tomorrowland, oh boy.

Speaker 7: 9:14

Yeah.

Speaker 5: 9:15

Just another section of embarrassment, but then that's unfortunately. That is kind of the beginning of the end of what we think of as Tomorrowland. When you go into the park, if you go into the Star Tours gift shop, there's a little shelf that has this kind of retro Tomorrowland tchotchkes, bags, socks, t-shirts and so forth and they're gorgeous, all the fabulous orange and blue color arrangements and they've got the people mover and they've got the monorail. Wow, I want that.

Speaker 4: 9:45

Yeah.

Speaker 5: 9:46

But then you turn around, you look around outside tomorrow, oh that's not there anymore.

Speaker 4: 9:50

I just hate the planet.

Speaker 4: 9:52

Great, you know it's like, yeah, and I would argue so, as we're moving up towards the creation of Disneyland and we're moving up towards the beginnings of Tomorrowland and in the first couple of years, you know, the Disneyland TV show is doing some futuristic stuff.

Speaker 4: 10:09

Mostly, ward Kimball is directing a show like man in Space and Our Friend the Atom, but I would argue that the most significant one of those was one that he also directed called Magic Highways USA, which is a lot of fun. It does that sort of world of motion thing where it's like here's the history of transportation in cartoon form. That's a lot of fun. Then it does this weird 15-minute segment about how highways are built and you don't think that's interesting until you're watching it and you're like, wow, they're taking the cement and they're actually mixing it with the ground up dirt and then planing that off and then pouring oil on, like this is kind of fascinating, but so they do that. It's also interesting in terms of, you know, when they're opening Disneyland itself. They're trying to get the five open, like that week. So you know, walt and his team are out literally bribing the workers with beer to get the exit so that people can get off it to get to Disneyland.

Speaker 5: 11:13

Right next to where we are sitting. Yeah, yeah, right next to where we were sitting, literally.

Speaker 4: 11:17

But then Magic Highways USA goes into the transportation of the future and I think this is really the thing that really inspires Tomorrowland, particularly when you get past that bumpy first few years, when you get past the Kaiser Hall of Aluminum and the bathroom of the future and the.

Speaker 5: 11:39

Don't worry, I don't even think they were thinking of that.

Speaker 4: 11:42

The art corner the 20,000 Leagues Exhibition. Wait, I wrote it down, yeah you did. This way we have notes.

Speaker 4: 11:49

The Clock of the World, the Flight Circle, hobbyland, the Hall of Chemistry, the World Beneath Us by Richfield Tyers, yep, those first couple of years, they're just trying to kind of move it along. Those first couple of years, you know, they're just trying to kind of move it along. But once they start changing things and once they start adding things, it really becomes about those last like 15 minutes or so of Magic Highways, usa. That's the transportation of the future that they start to build in Tomorrowland and that's kind of why I make this argument that turning Tomorrowland into science fiction is— or science fantasy.

Speaker 5: 12:30

Yeah, let's actually—I would like to actually make the argument that it's science fantasy. Yeah, because science fiction is about progress, especially when you have writers like Wells and Jules Verne, who actually have a conflict, where Jules Verne wrote this book from the voyage de la lune of going up to the moon.

Speaker 7: 12:49

He says I figured out how to get people up to the moon. We put them inside this giant bullet and we shoot them up into space. That Englishman, he writes this book. It's this magical paint called Cavarite. He's very stupid. This is science fantasy. I do science fiction.

Speaker 5: 13:08

And so that's the kind of argument that would go on. So I would actually make the argument that it's science, fantasy where we have progressed now especially.

Speaker 4: 13:15

Yeah, to kind of double down on this idea. I see no indication in the records that Walt Disney was particularly interested in science fiction. Now, many of you are. I know the thing that just popped into your heads and I can see it in your eyes. Ray Bradbury claims that he met Walt Disney and Walt Disney said I've read some of your books. Actually, no, he said I've read your books. I love Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury and Ursula Le Guin are like the best science fiction fantasy writers of the 20th century. Ray Bradbury lies.

Speaker 5: 14:01

I didn't write prunes in any of my stories. What are these guys?

Speaker 4: 14:04

trying to pull. Ray Bradbury is notorious about exaggerating stories to kind of make himself look more interesting in retrospect.

Speaker 5: 14:18

I actually stepped on that butterfly and I was fine. And I was fine. Look, I've turned out fine. I didn't have hair before then and I do now. Let's go to Clifton's, yeah.

Speaker 4: 14:34

I talked to. Recently I had an email conversation with a guy, Dr Phil Nichols. He's a British literary scholar. He's possibly the world's foremost scholar on Ray Bradbury and he's a guy that if you have a Bradbury question he's allowed to go. Look through his letters. That's where this guy is and we talked a little bit about Ray's stories of reworking something wicked. This way comes Theoretically, it had a bad screening. They started reworking it In later years. Bradbury started saying well, I came in and filmed all of the reshoots and I re-edited the film and I saved it. He said this a lot. You can find video of him saying it when they dedicated the Halloween tree. He talks about it. Ray Bradbury lies. He did not do that. Yeah, we have plenty of documentation that they were going to let him in. He wasn't in the director's union. He wouldn't have been allowed to film anything. They had pretty much shut him out of the production by the end.

Speaker 5: 15:41

They weren't responding to him or the original. He let Ray Harryhausen run around on set all the time. Well, that'd be kind of cool, it was. There's photographs of that, really. Yeah, they're on the set. They're in this little city square there in front of the barber pole, and there's the Harryhausens and there's Ray Bradbury going hello everybody.

Speaker 4: 15:58

I let him on set. This is interesting, so I just read. There's some later books that Bradbury wrote. He started writing noirs. He started writing noirs and crime fiction and he wrote a trilogy of noirs that are semi-autobiographical. It's clearly him, and in one of them it's him and Ray Harryhausen solving a mystery together. That's cool and it's super fun. It's ridiculous but it's super fun, especially if you live in Los Angeles, as he did for most of his life. You get to really get seeped into that culture that he came up through.

Speaker 5: 16:37

It's that great fight scene in which the criminal has got them cornered in the Biltmore Hotel and then Harryhausen reaches in his pocket and throws a skeleton at them. It's pretty great. So let's get into the creation here of, let's get into the meat and potatoes here, and it's funny that Kelly's got all of his notes here in front of him.

Speaker 4: 16:59

I do this a lot and I use like a tenth of them.

Speaker 5: 17:03

And me. I just wing it, but Kelly has all of his notes held together with paperclips, and I would make the argument that Tomorrowland begins with a very With paperclips. It begins with paperclips, very specifically Operation Paperclip. That's right, because which was, for those who don't know, this was the push of the American government at the end of World War II to try and turn Nazi scientists into American scientists, so that way they wouldn't be taken by the Soviet Union, because we were suddenly like, oh well, we don't have the Nazis to be afraid of anymore. Now we got Stalin, so now we better get all these German scientists on our side if we're going to start doing rocketry. And so, with Operation Paperclip, they got all these different scientists doing various things, and one of which was, of course, Werner Von Braun.

Speaker 7: 17:53

Nazi schmatzi, nazi schmatzi, says Werner Von Braun.

Speaker 5: 17:57

So, werner Von Braun, I have to do the voice. Yeah, I know it's going to start sounding like Ludwig von Drake, but Werner Von Braun.

Speaker 7: 18:06

Braun came all the way over here to work on the rockets.

Speaker 5: 18:11

So, and he like that was his Lean into the von Drake, it's better, it's better, yeah.

Speaker 7: 18:16

Yeah, he came over here to work on the rockets.

Speaker 5: 18:18

It was very, very fascinating. But apparently he was very outspoken Like at first. He was like the only reason why I joined the Nazi party was so that way I could make the rockets.

Speaker 7: 18:33

And then he started to realize like, oh, wait a minute, you're doing all of this ethnic cleansing stuff.

Speaker 5: 18:37

This is making me a little uncomfortable. Who's going to build my rockets now? You know. So he would be very outspoken about it. Well, I guess he spoke to one too many people, and so he was actually in prison for two years by adolf hitler, and the only reason why he wasn't executed, like adolf hitler himself said like nine, we need, we need him. Why I just made hitler sound like arnold schwarzenegger, I don't know, but there it is and you know. So Adolf Hitler got him out and basically, from that point on, wernher von Braun was like trying to get out of Nazi Germany, saying I'm in real trouble, yeah. And so he got in on Operation Paperclip and became an American scientist with very strong old world Nazi ties yeah, uncomfortable. Then it becomes the launch of Sputnik. Very strong old world Nazi ties, yeah, uncomfortable. Then it becomes the launch of Sputnik. Yeah.

Speaker 5: 19:30

In which the space race really kicks in. Yeah, and the United States government suddenly realizes that we have a small ball, about two and a half feet wide sphere, with these long rods, these four rods sticking out the back, and all it did was go beep, beep, beep, but it was flying overhead. My father actually told stories of looking up and he could see Sputnik going overhead and it really terrified people because if they could get that up into space, they could get anything into space. How the hell did we get? How did we get beaten up there? We got to get something anything into space. How the hell did we get beaten up there? We got to get something up in this space fast. So it became the space race of trying to build rockets to get us up to the moon.

Speaker 5: 20:13

The problem was the American public was not ready for this. We were still in the throes of the Red Scare, mccarthyism was at its peak and everybody was more worried about their neighbor than the actual Soviets, who really were saying, oh, we've got to take down the Americans. So it became this push, and so they needed a way to convince the American public that this was something that you should spend your tax dollars on. We hadn't gotten to Kennedy's, we chose to go to the moon. Yeah, we hadn't gotten to that point yet, right, it was just let's get to space, right?

Speaker 5: 20:51

So they called upon one particular person who had served them well during World War II with propaganda pictures, like Donald Duck's Diffuser's Face, which I love, um, and all of their educational films and, uh, all of their um logos and so forth, that they would do for the different outfits, like the CBs and all the other uh outfits in the war, which was Walt Disney. And they basically approached them and said hey, you have this program on ABC, you're building this theme park. Is there any way that you can help us out a little bit? Like we sent you on this Goodwill tour of South America, mostly to get rid of Walt, so that way they could settle the strike of 1941. While he wasn't in the country.

Speaker 9: 21:39

Yeah, it's like let's get him out of the country so we can get this labor dispute taken care of.

Speaker 5: 21:43

So he shipped them off, but he served them well enough and he was. For those of you who may not have heard our show, we divide Walt's life into three sections. The first section is from birth to just before he starts working on Snow White, and that's Walt the Huckster. Yeah, I would not work with Walt the Huckster. Yeah, I would not work with Walt the Huckster at all.

Speaker 4: 22:05

But you would not be able to resist Walt the Huckster, because this is a guy that had a company in Kansas City, didn't pay all his animators for like six months, moved out to Hollywood, called them and convinced them to come work for him again.

Speaker 5: 22:20

Including Ubar Works. Yeah, you know yeah.

Speaker 4: 22:23

He absolutely was a genius at inspiring people to come work for him again, including Uwe Eirwerks. Yeah, you know? Yeah, he absolutely was a genius at inspiring people to come work for him. He was the Henry Hill of animation. It worked out in the long run. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 5: 22:31

And then there's part two. His next chapter is life, which is very brief. It's Walt the Artur. He releases Snow White. Oh, walt Disney's a genius, he's the great, you know, he's there with Dali and Leopold Stokowski. This guy's the great artist, right. And then the strike happens in El Grupo, where he goes off to South America. That's the end of the auteur, which is a very short space of time, yeah, 1937 to 1945, roughly. And then the war ends, and then he starts to kind of blossom and become the Uncle Walt that we know. That's the one that everybody goes. Yeah, uncle Walt.

Speaker 4: 23:10

That's the one we're familiar with. That's the one that we're mostly familiar with, because we saw him on TV all the time.

Speaker 5: 23:15

Right thanks to ABC.

Speaker 4: 23:19

I didn't know when I was growing up that he was not alive, because I would watch Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday.

Speaker 5: 23:27

It took me a minute Like he was fake. No, automaton Walt. Well, we were talking about Ray Harryhausen.

Speaker 4: 23:36

That's too soon, isn't it? That's too soon.

Speaker 5: 23:38

Don't worry folks, he's coming out in July, yeah, so anyway.

Speaker 4: 23:43

But yeah, I just assumed that he was still around, because I saw him on TV every week. That's the one that I grew up with and loved. Yes.

Speaker 5: 23:50

Exactly so. This is the Walt that is approached with all of his baggage and all of the stuff that had come about before. Now we're in the 50s, we've gotten through the Red Scare, now it's. Can you find a way how to tell the American people you've got their eyes, they're tuning in to see you're building Disneyland. Is there a way we can do this?

Speaker 5: 24:09

And so he talks to the few artists who isn't working on Disneyland, ward Kimball and he gets Ward away from his trains for a couple minutes. And Ward is a genius like there's very few people. He's actually noted as one of the very few people that Walt really looked at and said you're a genius in the original Imagineering crew To get that type of compliment from Walt Disney. He wouldn't even compliment you in your Jell-O Like this is really tasty. He wouldn't even do that. But Ward Kimball, he brought him on board and Ward said, hmm, let me make a couple of phone calls. And he literally just got on the phone. He was like can I talk to Wernher von Braun? And brought him on there. And so we had. Was it the man journey man in space, man in space.

Speaker 4: 24:59

There's an interesting thing about Ward Kimball, wernher von Braun and man in space. So first off off, they surprisingly predicted how the space flight to the moon was going to happen. Yeah, like they pretty much nailed it. Yep, they were like this yeah, that what they showed was kind of what they did when, uh, they used some footage of that for the original flight to the moon attraction. And there's some footage. When you circle the moon, there's a brief flash and there's a little bit of what looks to be an ancient civilization on the moon as you circle it. Von Braun was furious. He was so angry that Kimball had put that in there. They had these major arguments about it because Von Braun was a scientist and he knew it wasn't true. But eventually Kimball just said you got to show him something. You have to give him something to have gotten to and seen. Wow.

Speaker 5: 25:52

Look at all that dirt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they did this, and a little side note about Werner von Braun and this specific special on the wonderful world of Disney. I do events and sometimes I do museum exhibits, and back in 2011, I worked on an exhibit called NASA Human Adventure and what it was? It was the story of the space race for Europeans, so they could understand NASA from this perspective.

Speaker 5: 26:25

I was responsible for doing this gallery called Go Fever, which was literally the birth of the Russian space program and the American space program and showing their concurrent growth side by side. So half the gallery was in red and all in Russian, and the other side was all blue and all in English. That was the most ham-handed metaphor I could think of, but it worked. And we had a replica of Sputnik overhead beeping. We had the tachometer from the X-1 that actually broke when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. That was really cool. And during the premiere of the exhibit there's a lot of stories from this exhibit, but the best that I had was during the premiere of this exhibit I got to shake hands with the Princess of Sweden. That was really cool. And then right afterwards, there was all these different astronauts and one was Charlie Duke from Apollo 17. And also Al Bean, who was another Apollo astronaut, these two guys who had actually been there on the moon. And I'm having dinner with them, just like this close. I'm like I'm with someone who's traveled more miles than I'll ever imagine in my life. And I remember asking Charlie Duke saying okay, let's get this out of the way here For all the people that think that the moon landing was faked.

Speaker 5: 27:42

When somebody asks you that question, what moon landing was faked? What, what, what is when? When somebody asks you that question, what do you tell them? He says, well, two things. One, we were spying on the Russians. They were, you know, and they were spying on us. If we were going to fake it, they would know that. Someone would know, someone would talk. There's no way we could get away with faking it at all. Believe me, our security was not that good. The second part he said is have you actually seen this Disney special called Journey to man in Space? Have you seen this? I said, yeah, he goes. Did you see the clip where Wernher von Braun is showing the moon landing and the rocket looks like a 57 Chevy with the fins, it's cherry red with glitter and it's got these fabulous yellow stripes and stuff on it. He takes it apart.

Speaker 7: 28:38

They're going to put him on the moon and this part will break off and they will land on the moon, and then it will come up and it's described in the space shuttle.

Speaker 5: 28:45

He says did you actually see what we landed on the moon with? Don't you think if we were faking it we would have made it look that cool, like let's give the audience what they wanted, like let's make it look like Forbidden Planet, you know? Like come on. So like that's why you don't fake it. So I said so. Wernher von Braun, you know, was he cool or what? And he says no.

Speaker 5: 29:10

I met him along with Gunther Wendt, one of the flight supervisors, and one of the best artifacts at that exhibit was a cowboy hat, this giant 10-gallon cowboy hat. That was a gift to Wernher von Braun from LBJ and it's huge, but it's a tiny, tiny little hat and I put it on. I'm like Werner did not have a lot of skull, so I've actually worn the cowboy hat of Werner Von Braun, but that's special. It was very instrumental. According to Charlie Duke this is who I get it from, it's from an actual Apollo astronaut he said that that was very instrumental in getting the American taxpayer to go.

Speaker 5: 29:52

I'm in Space, is it man? Space is the place. Let's do this. And it wasn't like let's beat the Russians, it was like no space is possible, let's do this. And so Walt kind of got into that push and I don't know if it was a quick decision when he was planning out the park. But even when you look at the early Herb Ryman drawings of the park that he was sketching out and drinking tons of coffee over a weekend, tomorrowland has just like a rocket and a couple little things like a little thing here.

Speaker 5: 30:27

And then Fantasyland. It's amazing. It's full of magic and adventure. A little rocket here, and Tomorrowland became like this afterthought. But he said we're going to have.

Speaker 4: 30:38

Tomorrowland. I swear to God, one of the things that's so interesting about that early Tomorrowland is probably all the intelligent and urbane people in this room know this. They weren't intending to open Tomorrowland with the rest of the park originally. Part of that was they had started building on it and they got really behind. Part of the reason they got behind was this guy, gabriel Scognamillo. Yep, do you know who Gabriel Scognamillo is? No, no, okay.

Speaker 5: 31:11

But you do.

Speaker 4: 31:12

Educate me. I like that. You pretended that was good. Does anyone know who Gabriel Scognamillo is? Gabriel Scognamillo was a film designer, and he had at that point, designed the robot for Tobor the Great and also the TV series spinoff of that movie called here Comes Tobor. I swear to God, I'm not making that up. Wow, here Comes Tobor.

Speaker 5: 31:39

We're going to have a clip on that in the show. It'll be great.

Speaker 4: 31:41

He also art directed a movie. I really love the Seven Faces of Dr Lau. Oh yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. And so he was the guy that Walt pulled in to start designing Tomorrowland. He didn't know much about the design of physical spaces. He had a great eye and he clearly was inspired by the Googie architecture that was starting to go up around him in the Los Angeles area, everywhere you know, sweeping fins and starbursts and stuff like that.

Speaker 5: 32:10

Okay so pause for just a second. Sweeping fins and starbursts and stuff like that. Okay so pause for just a second. Googie, or Goo-gee as some people refer to it is named after a restaurant called Goo-gee's that started off with that style of architecture and when you think for those who are listening at home, when you think Jetsons, with the sweeping lines, the very specific colors of teal, very specific yellows and blues, that is Gucci and it lasts for a very short space of time, but it's very, very powerful and very, very dynamic and very Los Angeles.

Speaker 4: 32:44

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and it is very much the room that we're in right now.

Speaker 5: 32:48

Oh yeah, we are surrounded by Gucci.

Speaker 4: 32:50

Right now, the Howard Johnson suite of the retro future, inspired by the Monsanto House of the Future. Nailed it yes. So that was why it got so far behind was that Skogndemill just didn't know how to design a real space, and so they used a lot of his drawings. But Herb Ryman came in towards the end and started cleaning stuff up, especially when Walt said at the last minute change my mind, we're going to open it anyway.

Speaker 5: 33:28

In six months.

Speaker 4: 33:29

Yeah, six months. Well, the whole park was a year I know.

Speaker 5: 33:36

I mean that's insane to me. But the rest of the park, I mean they had. You know, here's the Fantasyland crew, here's the people who are going to be moving all the orange groves, here's, you know, the Adventureland crew. And then they would stop all the people working on Tomorrowland. Just stop, Just leave it there. Yeah, no, never mind, we got to do it in six months. What Do what? In six months, I don't know. Put something in there, it's something for tomorrow. Yeah, what? And that's how it felt. It was like they were literally like panicking, like we could put this in here, we could put that in there. I don't actually know if that's historically accurate, but that's certainly how it feels retrospectively, yeah.

Speaker 4: 34:16

But they ended up opening up Tomorrowland and it was a moderate success compared to the rest of the park. Right when Tomorrowland starts to become really interesting is as we move into the 60s, as to the 60s, as we bring online the monorail, as we you know everyone, of course the beloved Viewliner, yeah.

Speaker 5: 34:40

Well, in 1955, let's— Nobody remembers the Viewliner. Listen to that. Yeah, let's actually like talk. So 55, when the park opens, it opens with Autopia. Thank you, bob Gurr. The Space Station X-1. Yeah, when the park opens, it opens with Autopia. Thank you, Bob.

Speaker 5: 34:55

Gurr, the Space Station X-1. Yeah, and the Space Station X-1 is a bizarre attraction because all it is is like check out the view and what it is. It's called a. It's a type of attraction. So here's Peter's very old deep dive. It is a type of attraction. So here's, here's Peter's very old deep dive.

Speaker 5: 35:16

Um, it is a type of attraction called a cyclorama, and a cyclorama goes back to the 1800s Some even say it goes back to the 1700s and what it is? It's a giant room. There's there's still a couple of them, um, in the South, like a confederama and so forth, and what it is? It Like Confederama and so forth, and what it is? It's a giant reverse dome. So, rather than the dome going overhead, it goes under you and you enter and there's a platform that you walk around and you look down at this reverse dome and there's some sort of landscape with a painted backdrop that goes all the way around you 365 degrees, and some sort of model, whether it's the Grand Canyon or whether it's the Battle of Gettysburg or whatever the cyclorama.

Speaker 5: 35:55

So Space Station X-1 is based off that. Where you're in the space station, you're like, wow, look at Earth from space and it's this blacklit model of Earth and the space station is this great hot dog cylinder painted red that you're supposed to be standing in. And my favorite thing about it are the posters, the train posters with the family. Wow, son, look at the planet. Earth below it we're on Space Station X-1. Where's that?

Speaker 5: 36:23

I don't know, but it's cool. So that's Space Station X-1. You had Autopia. We had the Monsanto Hall of Chemistry, yeah, and we also had Dutch boyanto Hall of Chemistry, yeah, yeah. And we also had Dutch Boy Lead Paint yes, to show off like the world of color. Yeah, sponsored by Dutch Boy, specifically Dutch Boy Lead Paint. So we had all these sponsors and I make the argument too, like Early Tomorrowland is kind of like this bizarre cyclical argument of hey, let's talk about how great progress is with the use of very toxic elements Aluminum, lead paint, all the chemicals of Monsanto and so that way, we're going to invest in pharmaceuticals. Like this is when conspiracy theory really comes. So, that way, when people have some sort of carcinoma from this stuff, because of how cool it is, we'll make a mint. Yeah, awkward, yeah, awkward. Thank you very much, disney. So yeah, and then in 56, they went right away, they added the Skyway, the aerial gondola which connected Tomorrowland with Fantasyland, going from one place to another. And now we get to the good stuff. Yeah, the 1960s.

Speaker 4: 37:46

Yeah, and you know, our last episode actually we did not the last of the previous ones, we did the story of the guy that invented and flew the rocket belt over Tomorrowland. It's one of the most harrowing stories you will ever hear. There's kidnapping, there's murder. Yes, I'm not kidding. It's amazing. It makes Pulp.

Speaker 5: 38:08

Fiction. Look like nothing. I went into this completely blind and he told me this story. I went you have got to be kidding me. It was crazy.

Speaker 4: 38:16

But what's interesting is the rocket pack or the rocket belt flyer guy flew a couple of times in 1966 before they closed down Tomorrowland and then inaugurated new Tomorrowland in 1967 with, I believe, his last flight at Disneyland, though he made a couple at Disney World after that. Yes, he did.

Speaker 4: 38:40

Yes, if I remember correctly, and it's that new Tomorrowland in 67 that we're really interested in. Yeah, that's the one that ties into the Magic Highways, transportation stuff. That's where you're suddenly walking in and everything's moving. Everything you look at is in motion. There's monorails, there's people movers, there's autopias, there's submarines. Some of this stuff came in the 50s, but a lot of it came out of the um 64, world's fair.

Speaker 5: 39:12

Which was not a World's Fair.

Speaker 4: 39:13

It was not a World's Fair actually. Do you folks know this? It was actually an unsanctioned World's Fair because Robert Moses didn't want to adhere to a lot of the rules of having a World's Fair. You were required to give a certain amount of free space to nations. He was refusing to do that. It had to be kept within a year. He refused to do that, and so the Bureau of International, the BIA, refused to sanction it, and so that's why you saw almost no Western European nations in the 64 New York World's Fair. Yep, but Yep, but yes, I want to kind of stop here and I want to talk about a different World's Fair in 1964. Yeah, look at the look on Pete's face. So often the New York World's Fair in 64 is called the Bandit Fair because it wasn't sanctioned. He wasn't supposed to do it. There's another one that's called the Ghost Fair because it never got made.

Speaker 4: 40:23

The alternate fair was in Washington DC and it was to be designed by an architect called Victor Gruen. Victor Gruen is primarily known as the inventor of the modern American mall, a thing that he hated being known as. He just loathed it. But we wouldn't have Dawn of the Dead without it. That's right. So a life well spent.

Speaker 4: 40:52

But the interesting thing about Victor Gruen, the interesting thing about that World Fair, is that Gruen knew about Walt Disney and Walt Disney knew about Victor Gruen and they were both very interested in each other. There's no evidence that they ever met but after Disney died, when they did a catalog of all of the books on his shelf, he had one book on urban planning and it was by Victor Gruen. There was no others and you know Disney had done some urban planning. It's across the street, you can see it from here but he was very interested in Victor Gruen. Gruen had also written about Disneyland and said that he was deeply impressed by it as a feat of urban planning and deeply distressed by what had happened around it, including where we're sitting right now, which is how Anaheim kind of grew chaotically around this beautifully planned city.

Speaker 5: 41:51

Howard Johnson. I hate Howard.

Speaker 4: 41:52

Johnson Now now, oh okay, they're nice people. Mildly irritated, gruen wrote about several things that Disney was going to soon implement. Yeah, gruen believed in this idea of cellular communities, which basically meant you had a bunch of pieces that had to all be healthy to add up to a whole working community. So he thought that Disneyland was a pretty good example of that and they were going to go farther with it. He thought this idea of having sort of singular utilities and resources kept kind of backstage of the area, but functioning at peak efficiency was going to be a sort of cellular base and then all of the components were going to feed into each other to form a sort of unified whole, kind of whole body urban area. You know how they would achieve that.

Speaker 6: 42:52

Hmm, magnification, magnification achieve that Magnification, magnification.

Speaker 4: 42:57

Magnification. He also another thing he had written about before 1967 was this idea of he believed pedestrian traffic and public transportation. He hated cars, as did Walt. He believed there should be multiple varying types of public transportation and they should not go on the same paths and they should be disconnected from each other, which is exactly what New Tomorrowland did. You had the monorail coming in one way, the people mover going another way, the submarines going another way, the Autopia going another way. They all took on different space but they were still unified. Some of them went through other things, some of them unified it as a whole.

Speaker 4: 43:40

The other thing that Gruen wrote about and I found this really interesting it doesn't apply so much to Tomorrowland, but it absolutely applies to Walt Disney World. Yeah, when he was going to build the Washington DC 1964 World's Fair, he was going to build a layer of utility floor and then put the actual visible public floor on top of it. He basically predicted the utilidors from Disney World and it's fairly clear that the Disney planners took it directly from there. Interesting. So Gruen's super interesting and he leads directly into this 1967 Tomorrowland, which is, to my mind, the platonic Tomorrowland. That's like 67, 69. That's the perfect Tomorrowland, and if we could have Space Mountain in there I'd be a little bit happier. But otherwise I think that that's when it was the progress that Walt was trying to show Right.

Speaker 5: 44:44

Yeah, I mean, you have the Carousel of Progress, you have the submarine ride in full fledge. Can I make a quick note about the submarine ride, would you? I would love to. That's why I asked.

Speaker 5: 44:58

Be my guest, Okay so quick little thing about the submarine ride. We all know the submarine ride at Disneyland. Sitting in this giant tube, looking at the little window and leaning over and the kid's next to you breathing over your shoulder and get out of here, kid, and the mermaids with their hair falling off the whole thing, that ride design has a lot to do with the actual survival of Disneyland, more so than we think. More so than we think.

Speaker 4: 45:36

Pete and I want to thank everybody that came out to the Howard Johnson Suite of the Retro Future and participated in this podcast with us. It just means so much. As I told Paul Barry, our host, we just like talking to people who love this stuff and this podcast is our contribution to the conversation. We met so many nice people, many with podcasts of their own, and we wanted to make sure you knew where to find them so you could listen to their wonderful shows. Of course there's our host, paul Barry, a window to the magic. His website is windowtothemagiccom. You can find him and all these other podcasts any place that you pick up podcasts Spotify, apple, whatever you use. In many ways, I think all of us there are just children of Paul.

Speaker 4: 46:20

We met Tracy and Scott from Disney Indiana. They're super nice folks. I was listening to their podcast today and just enjoying it. They are at all one word, disneyindianacom. We met Clinton from Comedy Forecast. That's Comedy4Castcom, and also the Topic is Trek, which is wwwTheTopicIsTrekcom. That's all one word. We met Tony from the Above the Firehouse podcast. He's at wwwAboveethefirehousecom. These are all great shows. You should really go out and give them a listen.

Speaker 4: 46:59

Also, quick shout out to our intrepid and brilliant travel agent, jill Romney of Touring and Cruises. She never fails us, no matter how crazy of a plan we bring to her and we brought her some doozies. Jill can help you book any Disney or cruise vacation you might be dreaming of. So get in touch at jillattouringandcruisescom. That's touring and cruises. All one word Let her know we sent you. And finally, a big thank you to my wife, heather, who found the stickers, suggested the automat and helped put this trip together. We couldn't have done it without her.

Speaker 5: 47:32

The automat and helped put this trip together. We couldn't have done it without her. In 1953, they began production at Walt Disney Studios on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with the designs of the Nautilus by Harper Goff.

Speaker 4: 47:45

You can see his cool wooden models of that at the Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. It's really neat.

Speaker 5: 47:51

I mean, I love Harper Goff's kind of Victorian futurism designs, back to Jules Verne. But if that film had flopped, walt and Roy had put everything into it. In 2011, I curated the same year that I did the NASA exhibit I did a second exhibit called Steampunk History Beyond Imagination at the Museo just down the street here in downtown Anaheim and it was all about look at this neat steampunk art. And then I said no, we have to talk about the history and upstairs. We had actually collaborated with the Walt Disney Company and I'm going to do a little name droppy here. Thanks to Kevin Kidney and Jody Daly, who helped me out with a lot of archival stuff. We put that they. They helped me out tremendously with that exhibit. Thank you, kevin and Jody.

Speaker 5: 48:42

We put together this whole section about 20,000 leagues under the sea and we were really worried that the Disney corporation was going to bust us for having so much memorabilia from the movie. The head of the Disneyland corporation came to it in the middle of the night in tow with Kevin and Jody. They had gone to the Anaheim Brewery, got them schnockered on a couple of growlers and you know Taco Tuesday and then brought them over going. Hey, let's show Pete's work. Pete's a really nice guy from Northern California. He's doing this thing and he looked at it and he goes me and he walks out and I went oh no, the next day we get this official lawyer shows up with a letter and he goes. That's for you, mr Overstreet, thank you very much.

Speaker 5: 49:20

And it basically said you can use anything 20,000 leagues in perpetuity. Wow, because they were so impressed on the story that we told, which was I would make the argument that that movie actually made Anaheim what it is today, love it or hate it. Because if that movie had failed at the box office and with all of the sunset squid incident of making this you know, poor Brogy, making this squid, that doesn't quite work. Well, harper Goff coming in and saving the day by making the actual squid sequence that we know and love from the film If that movie had actually failed, the park wouldn't exist, because they had mortgaged everything against that movie in order to make it work, because it doubled the budget. The Sunset Squid doubled the budget.

Speaker 4: 50:05

And ironically, it's a movie directed by the son of his greatest competitor. The son of Max Fleischer directed that movie, richard.

Speaker 5: 50:13

Fleischer, richard Fleischer, richard Fleischer, yeah, who also directed the Vikings with Ernest Borgnine and Kirk Douglas and Conan the Destroyer.

Speaker 7: 50:22

That was his last film.

Speaker 4: 50:23

Wait, I have to throw in my quick Richard and Max Fleischer story. Richard Fleischer was directing 20,000 Leagues and Max had. You know the Fleischer brothers had been driven out of business at that point. They kind of got screwed over.

Speaker 5: 50:38

Well, I mean Max referred to Walt Disney as quote, that son of a bitch.

Speaker 4: 50:44

Well, Walt wasn't the problem ultimately? No, he wasn't. Like they moved to.

Speaker 4: 50:47

Florida and they got taken over. But Max had retired and Richard Fleischer asked Walt at some point. He said could my dad come see the studio? Could Max come see the studio? And Walt said absolutely, have him come by this Saturday. And Richard said great. So they flew Max in from New York, I believe, is where he'd moved back to. They flew Max Inn. But what Walt did in the interim time he went and found every single living animator that had worked for the Fleischer Studios and flew them in to the Disney Studios so that when Max Fleischer showed up it was everyone he had worked with that they could get a hold of. It was like this massive homecoming of the Fleischer studios which is actually really sweet. Yeah, really sweet, really really sweet. I think it's so moving and it just shows the heart of the guy Absolutely.

Speaker 5: 51:47

So the ride, the submarine ride, comes out of the fact that while they were in 55 trying to put anything in there, walt said well, let's just do a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea exhibit. Let's take all the movie sets and the props and put them in and we'll have them give a tour. And it's like this circular tour you walk around a tank of the giant squid. The problem is at the end of the production of the film they had destroyed most of the sets. They were all broken up, so some of the fiberglass pieces had to get reestablished. They had to find the organ because they hadn't started working on the Haunted Mansion yet. So the organ was sitting in somebody's basement and they had to find all these bits and pieces and reconstruct. So it was a lot more work than Walt first thought. So it was a lot more work than Walt first thought. But it was only until later that we got the submarine ride and I'm sure we'll do a full episode on it.

Speaker 5: 52:44

But I want to do a quick deep dive on it because the origin of that ride goes back to Coney Island in the turn of the century Westinghouse Corporation you want to talk about like into the future, they were getting into electric refrigeration. And so in Coney Island they put together a ride that was 20,000 leagues under the sea, based off of the book by Jules Verne, and you got into these tubes. There were two tubes on either side of an arm with a kind of like a screw right in the middle of it with gears on it and a giant cyclorama of all these different levels of the ocean. And there were these air compressors that would blow bubbles in front of the screen, very much like the ride that we have now, except you're not actually submerged, but you sit on these little cramped little things, looking at these portals, saying, wow, we're going Now, we're going super deep, but you're going upward. And then you would reach a certain point and then the windows would pop open and the sides would open up.

Speaker 5: 53:40

Here we are in the arctic, and because it was westinghouse, they had refrigerated this huge trough above everything and they had live penguins, a polar and Inuits in canoes. Hi, welcome to the Arctic. And you're like what? And then it would go around in a circle and you'd see this whole thing and then it would start going back down again. You'd go in the opposite direction. So it was built like two spirals going up, so it was a different journey, and someone would narrate it as you're going in these spirals, and that lasted in Luna Park until 1932, when they finally shut it down. Wow, it was crazy, wow.

Speaker 2: 54:21

So yeah, that ride as much as we love to say, yep, it's really innovative.

Speaker 4: 54:22

it's not that new, but it's wonderful.

Speaker 5: 54:25

But it's wonderful and it is a staple of Tomorrowland and, like you said, it's about all the transportation, of moving in and out of each other, with Autopia going over and around in the monorail, going over the submarines.

Speaker 4: 54:38

You know what? One of the reasons that the monorail was fairly cheap to build. I mean it wasn't cheap, but it was cheaper Right, the Imagineer Lee Adams was Sorry, I'm obsessed with Imagineer Lee Adams. He went there.

Speaker 5: 54:53

He found a way to work Lee Adams into this episode.

Speaker 4: 54:56

We can talk about it after the episode. He was an ex-Westinghouse man, which is why I remembered this. And two things Pete gets fed up with me talking about is Imagineer Lee Adams and the flow of water dark water system flowing through Disneyland.

Speaker 5: 55:15

Now, to be fair, I'm not sick of the dark water thing. Your family hates it.

Speaker 4: 55:18

That's right. My kid actually hit me in the arm today.

Speaker 7: 55:21

Stop doing, it Stop doing it.

Speaker 4: 55:23

But Lee Adams was a Westinghouse man and could get cheap Westinghouse components, which helped them make the monorails for cheaper.

Speaker 5: 55:29

Yeah, and of course we also have that fabulous mural by Mary.

Speaker 4: 55:35

Blair. Yeah Well, so this is interesting. I want to take a pause here. We should probably wrap up this section in about 10 minutes, so everyone be thinking about what you would do to plus up today's Tomorrowland. Yeah, because we're going to start asking people. Yeah. We're not going to point at you and do it. That's mean.

Speaker 7: 55:52

You do it.

Speaker 4: 55:54

But I suspect you'll have ideas, yeah.

Speaker 5: 55:56

And it could be anything, because, as our slogan goes at the beginning of the show, we plus things up without any consideration of safety budget.

Speaker 4: 56:05

Yeah, any, sort of viability. We don't care.

Speaker 5: 56:07

We don't care.

Speaker 4: 56:14

Like, if you could do anything, what would you do to tomorrowland? Yeah, my, my, my last plus up was to turn the old conan stage show into a giant jerry anderson super marionation show. So if that gives you any perspective, how much range you have. The six foot puppets yeah, amazing. But the mary blair portraits, um which. It is a crime that those got covered up and damaged.

Speaker 5: 56:31

Thank you, clap. We really want to clap. I love Mary Blair.

Speaker 4: 56:37

New Mary Blair exhibit at the Disney Family Museum starting in like two weeks.

Speaker 5: 56:42

I grew up next to her old homestead, by the way, in Morgan Hill, that's right.

Speaker 4: 56:46

But the reason that those murals are interested aside from the fact that it's a major mural by a major American artist is that one of the things that they kind of got wrong in Magic Highways USA was that they based a lot of the technologies on the fact that we would have completely free, sustainable, redundant energy, which we don't. And so it's very interesting that when they open New Tomorrowland, you have these massive Mary Blair murals that are about sustainable energy. They're about water flow, they're solar. You can see steam involved on them and I don't know how connected that was in anybody's head, but I think it's really interesting. It's almost like them saying we almost got there, but here's an aspirational view of how we could take it the next step.

Speaker 5: 57:42

And I find it weird, like in 1998, that's when the new, new Tomorrowland, when we finally get the Orbitron and this is Tony Baxter's big push for Tomorrowland of the kind of semi-steampunk 90s aesthetic of all the copper and the I see you smiling delightfully. We had the rocket racer, we had the rocket rods, the whole thing. Or as Bob Gurr likes to call the rocket rods, the world's greatest plant trough.

Speaker 4: 58:12

I think he called the track the world's most expensive leaf catcher when we saw it.

Speaker 5: 58:17

Yeah it was crazy. So, but in 1998, that was actually a very fascinating time to see that, because especially for those of us who, like, we're all pretty close to the same generation here and we're growing up, it's like Indiana Jones opens up yay, adventureland's all revitalized. That looks great.

Speaker 5: 58:37

Now we're going to do the same thing to tomorrowland and everybody went yeah, and we got there was like, oh, okay, okay, let's see if this works. Wait, you got rid of the people mover. You want us to get into these bird cages that are like tricycles and they make you do this and you're zipping around on the same track. It's like wait, you took out Tron.

Speaker 4: 58:57

The speed tunnel.

Speaker 5: 58:58

Yeah, the speed tunnel you have entered into the master control program. Yeah, yeah, they got rid of all that, and bit by bit. Everything was so over-engineered Even Bob says it, it was so over-engineered, even Bob says it, it was so over-engineered. This would start to break down. That would start to break down and the kinetic nature of Tomorrowland in the 90s into the 2000s starts to just come dead. And that, to me, is a crime.

Speaker 4: 59:29

We walked through there today and the thing that pete said and it was absolutely true is you'd look up and nothing's moving, nothing. And you know it used to be when the the rocket jets were on top of the people mover track, like it was this big spinning moving thing. People movers were coming by and it's just all static now. And I I love star wars just as much as the next guy. I love Galaxy's Edge, though I would burn it down to have the people move her back, but I don't want Star Tours there and this may be. Oh, I see some people that agree with me.

Speaker 5: 1:00:07

I don't want it gone, I just want it moved.

Speaker 4: 1:00:09

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Move it over to Batuu, yeah, and that's fine.

Speaker 5: 1:00:13

Yeah, totally fine, believe me, because they've got a lot of real estate there.

Speaker 4: 1:00:18

Yeah, you know.

Speaker 10: 1:00:19

Yes.

Speaker 5: 1:00:19

Yes, there's a comment here.

Speaker 10: 1:00:20

They can even not just move Star Tours to Batuu. They can have it be like the entrance to Batuu, yeah Like a short film, because one of yeah.

Speaker 5: 1:00:34

I think that's brilliant.

Speaker 4: 1:00:47

That's an amazing yes round of applause.

Speaker 10: 1:00:49

That's a great one.

Speaker 4: 1:00:51

That was a great one, dude. I think that well, and we'll get to this in our plus ups, but right now it is this odd mishmash of space fantasy and science fiction. And, my God, why can't they do anything with the Carousel of Progress building? It's just nothing. Now. I think there's a lounge up there now, is that right? There's also a store. There's just nothing. Now. I think there's a lounge up there now, is that right? There's a store. Yeah, okay, You're so weird. The rocket is hawking pizza.

Speaker 5: 1:01:25

And, of course, autopia. As much as I love it, it's still Although, bob, when we went and saw Bob, we saw him at the symposium over at Garner Holt and he was like and they're gonna make it electric, it's gonna be great, I can't wait he's super into it. He's totally into it. He's just bouncing in his seat in his giant bright colored shoes. Yes, and everybody just went. Yay, bob yeah. I'm humoring him because we were all feeling the same thing.

Speaker 4: 1:01:52

It was like yes, please I get to sit in a dune buggy with Bob Gurr Ooh.

Speaker 5: 1:01:57

Yeah, it was cool. I got a picture of it. All I got to do was go to the bathroom next to Maynard. I had to wear the napkin on my head and everything. I had to wear the napkin on my head and everything. So now we've reached a point where we've kind of given you the background, the backstory of the glory days of Tomorrowland, and kind of given you a brief little timeline. But now we've reached the part of the show where Kelly and I usually do a plus-up, but this time we're not doing it.

Speaker 4: 1:02:30

I ain't doing it. I'm also doing one, but mine's not the important one.

Speaker 5: 1:02:35

No, it is not. So I'm going to be the moderator tonight and I'm going to start passing the mic around, because we're going to go to our lovely studio audience here in our suite who've been very gracious in staying awake with us, yeah and we're going to ask them to give us their plus-ups of Tomorrowland. So the question would be what would you do with Tomorrowland now? To restore it to its former glory or anything? What would you do? Yeah, you got one. Okay, hold on a second.

Speaker 5: 1:03:04

I'm going to get up here and get the mic here. Start off by telling us your name and then give us your plus up.

Speaker 4: 1:03:10

Yeah, and if you've got a podcast or anything, please tell us that too.

Speaker 12: 1:03:20

Yeah, plug name and then give us your plus. Yeah, and if you've got a podcast or anything, please tell us that too. Yeah, plug away. Yeah, my name is tiffany and I actually feel like they missed the mark when they came out with the um the movie tomorrowland and they should have brought back the people mover. Of course.

Speaker 4: 1:03:27

That's number one you have to have the people mover.

Speaker 12: 1:03:30

We need to get rid of Buzz Lightyear. It could go over to DCA as well, because I do like Buzz Lightyear, but it needs to go over to DCA. Get rid of Star Tours and they could have done so much with the movie Tomorrowland. I agree. Yeah. Awesome movie and so much could be done.

Speaker 4: 1:03:52

Hey Pete, can you give her a sticker?

Speaker 5: 1:03:54

Absolutely.

Speaker 4: 1:03:56

Cool stickers for anyone who has a plus up.

Speaker 5: 1:03:58

There you go. Who's next? Another plus up Okay.

Speaker 8: 1:04:04

Hi Clinton, two podcasts, comedy Forecast, and the topic is Trek Awesome Two things. Well, one thing I've talked about for ages that you always hear about the fact that this is more practical, but still the concept that the people who track cracked damage from rocket rods. Yeah.

Speaker 8: 1:04:24

I've always thought but the track is there and you can put things on that don't take weight, that still give you motion. Because I thought when Tron came out, if you had light cycles going around that track you would have gotten motion. You would have gotten light. Uh, yeah, when star, star wars and star tours is there, have different bots or something going, anything to get motion on that track would be one thing, yeah, and the second thing is move star tours out of there and the amount of amazing things that actually now happen in science and space. You take that technology and you say, okay, we're going to actually make something very interesting, a fun ride. That's changeable as time goes on because it's just video of what is actually happening in space in science. Think about a combination of Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson talking excitedly about the future.

Speaker 4: 1:05:24

Yeah.

Speaker 8: 1:05:24

What's happening.

Speaker 4: 1:05:25

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 5: 1:05:26

That's a great one Absolutely Thank you. Yeah, I love getting some real science back in there, right, absolutely Thank you who's next?

Speaker 4: 1:05:34

Yeah, I love getting some real science back in there, right.

Speaker 5: 1:05:38

Except for Neil deGrasse Tyson. He will actually disprove the existence of Disneyland. Anybody else who's got a plus Yay Name and plug your podcast please.

Speaker 11: 1:05:51

This is Tracy from the Disney Indiana podcast and I would bring back the Skyway. Oh, yeah, yeah good call that would give us the kinetic movement. That would give us another way to get across the park.

Speaker 5: 1:06:05

Yeah, and it would sell more hats. Thank you, yeah, that's great. Thank you, yeah, that's great, thank you.

Speaker 10: 1:06:17

Okay Now the intervention is completely pretty much unused now and it, in my opinion, has had two really good things in it Carousel of Progress and the Intervention's Dream Home. The Dream Home was a great place to just chill and relax, so it'd be cool if they could bring both those back. Have Carousel of Progress, be on the first floor and then bring back the old finale scene where you went up, and then it will be into the dream home the family could be like. We would now like to invite you into our home of the future.

Speaker 4: 1:07:07

Yeah, oh, that's great, thank you. Anybody else?

Speaker 8: 1:07:14

Oh, come on, All right, here we go. He's like me Go for it.

Speaker 6: 1:07:20

My name is Scott Morris. I'm the co-host of the Disney and Indiana podcast with my wife and one thing I thought of that might actually kill two birds with one stone. Most of the people in this country don't quite understand how solutions to like wind power, solar power or that kind of stuff. So if we electrified some of the Topia or a future people mover, and then the town? I'm at that. We have windmills in the town that the local bus uses to create power for their buses. Oh, cool.

Speaker 6: 1:08:01

So what if we put some windmills in there? Have them running. There's your movement. Yes, more movement, nice, windmills in there, have them running. There's your movement. Yes, more movement nice. And does the. And you all show, show everybody that the power from this windmill is powering a topia or is powering the, these different rides and how it works yeah, I love that.

Speaker 4: 1:08:23

That's a great one that's an elegant thank you, yeah, right, yeah, oh, we got another one. That's a great one, that's an elegant solution.

Speaker 11: 1:08:29

Thank you, yeah, great, yeah, oh, we got another one. This is Tracy. Again. To build on what Scott was just saying about alternate power sources, why not do solar panels over the parking lots? Oh yeah.

Speaker 4: 1:08:46

Or the parking garages. Yeah Again, it's almost a no-brainer, isn't it? I mean, they are doing that at Legoland already. I'm into it. I'm into it, all right.

Speaker 5: 1:09:06

You want a second one, anybody else, this is a plus-up. All right, kelly.

Speaker 4: 1:09:12

All right, it's time for yours. Is it me? I see some people back there kind of going eh eh eh, maybe, maybe, eh, maybe.

Speaker 5: 1:09:19

Be bold, you first, and then you.

Speaker 7: 1:09:22

No. Oh are you back here? Maybe you might have a little bit of an idea All right, beer on beer.

Speaker 5: 1:09:28

Let's hear it.

Speaker 9: 1:09:30

One thing growing up as a kid and I remember it, by the way, this is Tony from the Above the Firehouse podcast yeah, yes and going in and there was always something that Walt liked to do was teach people something. Yeah.

Speaker 9: 1:09:40

Besides the story, maybe what I would like to do is put the rocket rods back on top, or the people mover station was, so you can go back up that elevator like the astronauts would do to kind of experience that back in the days you know, and just, uh, maybe add another attraction that would teach people stuff like exploration of space, where they can kind of simulate that themselves. I love that. That's awesome. Thank you so much, we'll trade.

Speaker 5: 1:10:12

Actually. Well, you got it. Go ahead, because you had another one that you wanted to see. No, you're like. No, I got something. All right, let's do our last one here. Yep, go ahead one more time.

Speaker 10: 1:10:22

Now this is kind of like a super blue sky idea. Likey will never work or be logistically possible. That's exactly what we're all about.

Speaker 4: 1:10:34

Yeah go for it.

Speaker 10: 1:10:35

This is a big blue sky, one Connecting energy back to the people mover tracks and be kind of like a choose-your-own adventure version of the people mover where, instead of just like passing by the attractions and hearing like a quick snip or just seeing a little brief, you could be like hmm, I really want to get a little bit more of a taste and you can like yeah do like a selection and, like it will like, take you onto the track and you you'll either go through the ride or get a little bit more of a snippet.

Speaker 4: 1:11:13

That's awesome. So you'd be on a sort of people mover vehicle and then all of a sudden you'd be on Space Mountain. I like that. People are just like holy crap.

Speaker 5: 1:11:24

That reminds me a little bit about when I used to actually travel through Monsonsanto's Journey to Inner Space or like Star Tours or something like that. Yeah, that type of energy, yeah. It's pretty great. All right, now I guess we got to wrap up. Nice job. Give him a round of applause. Give him a round of applause here, all right. So, kelly, let's do yours. All right, what is your?

Speaker 4: 1:11:43

plus-out tomorrow. All right, so here's my plus-out. I even wrote it down. I wrote a little speech I don't come to this. Just a few words. I'd like to thank the Academy and Elvis. So my idea is to do what I'm kind of calling the Tex Avery slash, jetson, slash Clifford Simac version of Tomorrowland. We get to have Dawes Butler in there.

Speaker 4: 1:12:11

Oh, of course you got Dawes Butler in there. Okay, go ahead First off, first thing that has to happen. Everything except Space Mountain has to go. Just it's gone. Star Tours can go to Galaxy's Edge. So don't like, I love Star Tours too. I enjoy it. Yep. Then a lot of the space will be futuristic living spaces, like places you can walk through, just like tons of weird gadgets. You know, like in Batuu now they occasionally have the little Huey, dewey and Louie robots, droids rocking around. Bring some of those in but have them like sweeping droids following you around and doing cleaning stuff. But have it be weird and kind of going wrong sometimes. You can have like model homes, like the House of the Future, the suite of which this is the retro of.

Speaker 5: 1:13:08

Please don't make him say the whole thing again.

Speaker 4: 1:13:12

Have we talked about the Howard Johnson's suite of the retro future, inspired by Monsanto's House of the Future? Did I get it?

Speaker 7: 1:13:24

Nailed it yes.

Speaker 4: 1:13:30

And so you can have homes like the House of the Future. But not only can you kind of walk through them, but you can ride through them because we're bringing the damn people mover back. Yeah, goodyear tires are going to move us around some more. Good year tires are going to move us around some more. You go through houses with ridiculous labor-saving devices just things that are funny. You've probably seen those Warner Brothers or MGM cartoons with houses of the future where things are going wrong and doors shut when they're not supposed to and the oven bursts into flames and then a little robot comes and puts it out. Stuff like that, but funny.

Speaker 5: 1:14:16

It's not like HAL 2000. No, I'm sorry. Chip oh wait, but I'm getting there. I'm sorry, billy, you only need 40 tickets to live.

Speaker 4: 1:14:25

What is this?

Speaker 5: 1:14:24

a sea ticket to live.

Speaker 4: 1:14:27

What is this? A sea ticket, and for food you turn that whole pizza palace area there. You turn it into the world's coolest automat. So a beautiful, art deco, classic sort of streamlined modern automat. But here's the trick With the auto-mat you can, through a sort of illusory trick, go to the backstage area and see how the food's being made. But the food's all being made by robotic arms and stuff like that you can.

Speaker 5: 1:15:06

I only see that from the people mover, though.

Speaker 4: 1:15:09

Yes, oh, that would be cool, good idea.

Speaker 5: 1:15:11

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So that's your behind the scenes like. If you look to your right, you can see the robotic chefs working on your food for the automata of the future yeah, you see, like arms, like flipping pancakes and flipping flipping burgers and like there's, you know, an insane.

Speaker 4: 1:15:30

there's an insane like rube goldberg device where an egg comes down like 14 ramps and knocks over dominoes and slants down and falls into an automatic egg breaker and falls onto a griddle which then tilts and make it dumps perfectly fried eggs onto plates that are on a conveyor belt that head towards the automat. Does somebody pour, mr T?

Speaker 5: 1:15:51

cereal all over it. Oh, for all you peewee fans out there, crazy, crazy like sandwich stacking machines.

Speaker 4: 1:16:00

Oh yeah, yeah, stuff like that. You end up with a giant Dagwood that no one would ever eat. And then you have the feature attraction. I'm bringing this back to Ray Bradbury. We're going to he's laughing at me we're going to have the there Will Come Soft Rains house. Do you guys know this story? Do you know? The one person that did had exactly the right reaction, which was oh, I don't know if I want to do that. And there Will Come Soft Rains is a great Ray Bradbury story about an automated house that is kind of running its routines and running like audio tapes and doing all these things, and slowly you begin to realize that not only is no one in the house, but there are no humans left. It's really tragic. Eventually the house bursts into flames. So this will be a fun ride.

Speaker 5: 1:16:56

I thought you were going to go for the VELT. Need a place to drop your kids off. Bring them to the VELT attraction in.

Speaker 4: 1:17:03

Tomorrowland. You know, what's weird is the VELT almost feels too modern. It does, yeah, but yeah. So you get to go through a ride. It'll be like the Tomorrowland version of the Haunted Mansion. You're riding through a house that's going wrong, it's dissolving, it's breaking down, it's scary, like things are being set on fire and you're worried there's some threat there, and it talks to you through these audio tapes in the walls as you're going through and sort of narrates the story, much like the Haunted Mansion, but for Tomorrowland. So it's kind of a massive themed ride with a little bit of thrill to it and some complexity, and so that's my plus up for Tomorrowland. Nice job, thank you.

Speaker 5: 1:18:00

Thank you. All right, am I going to do one now? Okay, are you Real quick? Yeah, this one's actually building off of that last part of yours actually. Okay, are you Real quick? Yeah, this one's actually building off of that last part of yours actually. Because my notion of it was to actually do a lot of this stuff that we've all been talking about, like moving Star Tours Just move it, you can do it. Disney, you can move it. Buzz Lightyear, same thing. Take it to DCA, that's okay.

Speaker 5: 1:18:24

Yeah, good call, but making it actually a historical recreation of the future, the way that it was seen in 1967. Yeah, so that way, when you are there, it's like this was the promise that we gave you. This is the promise and you wanted this. Yeah, what happened? So let's bring it back. Yeah, show some optimism and show some optimism. But it's like you found it. We've lovingly recreated this, but, like you said, now we're using technology that involves you into the other attractions we have.

Speaker 5: 1:19:01

The PeopleMover would be back. We would go to Mars again. We would bring that attraction and make the journey to Mars be a thing again. Yeah, without Captain Eoge steering us there, but that's a different episode, but the notion would be that everything just looks a little rusty, like you really have. Like it's almost like my thought was like they buried the old Tomorrowland and then, while fixing up the new, new Tomorrowland, they went hey, we actually found all the people moving cars.

Speaker 5: 1:19:36

Let's put them back and it becomes like the promise of tomorrow today. Like that becomes the, that becomes the whole point. The promise of tomorrow today. Let's bring that promise back. The promise of tomorrow today. Let's bring that promise back. And you're actually asking, through all the different attractions and all of the different storylines, you're actually asking the audience to participate in revitalizing the future, revitalizing the hope of the future, by looking at this thing that we lost and say don't you remember how this was important, this was to us as kids? Don't you remember how important that memory of Tomorrowland is? Only a memory, it's not the Tomorrowland that you actually see today, but yet you see it in your head when you say Tomorrowland For a lot of us that are a little bit older than 1998, me we think of the 1967 to 1998 or earlier versions of Tomorrowland, not the current version of it, but add solar, add the wind power.

Speaker 5: 1:20:32

It's like we're building upon that promise and moving forward literally from that point. Yeah, we're not trying to do something different, we're actually going to build upon this and see where that takes us, because you know what?

Speaker 4: 1:20:50

They weren't 100% wrong, except for the lead paint and the Monsanto chemistry and all that stuff. Barring that, the Kaiser pig.

Speaker 5: 1:20:58

Yeah, but that being said.

Speaker 4: 1:21:02

I think for that you deserve a sticker.

Speaker 5: 1:21:04

Oh, yay, I get a flying cheeseburger marijuana boat. This is awesome. It's literally like a cruiser with, like you know, treads. It's like a yacht that's on the ground for some reason. It's awesome. I love this. It's crazy. It's literally a boat on the freeway. That is the best ever so we have reached the end of our show today hey before we is oh, yes, yeah, oh, please, yeah, yeah, one more while I appreciate this is scott from the disney indiana podcast.

Speaker 6: 1:21:35

Again, while I appreciate all of the ideas and everything that was talked about, and I don't want to be a downer, yeah, but I don't think we've really addressed the real reason that I think personally that Tomorrowland is a problem is tomorrow actually comes and things get outdated so quickly. Yep.

Speaker 5: 1:22:00

It's a great point.

Speaker 6: 1:22:01

One of the things I like about your idea is showing stuff how, in the 60s and 50s, that we thought the future was going to be. Maybe, not what it actually became. So maybe have Tomorrowland be the land that never came.

Speaker 5: 1:22:23

Yeah, yeah, the tomorrow that never was the tomorrow.

Speaker 6: 1:22:25

That never was, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5: 1:22:25

The tomorrow that never was the tomorrow that never was.

Speaker 4: 1:22:27

And then maybe encourage people to say, hey, it is actually okay to think about the future optimistically. And strive to some of these ideas, yeah.

Speaker 6: 1:22:37

That's marvelous.

Speaker 5: 1:22:38

Thank you for that. Yeah, thank you, great note. Thank you so much. That's fantastic.

Speaker 4: 1:22:43

All right. So before we close down, I just want to thank and give another round of applause to our friend Paul Berry from Window to the Magic who invited us here. Thank you so much for your generosity and thank you all friends. It's been so nice to meet you and such a pleasure and honor to be able to kind of do this in front of you. We really appreciate you, Thank you.

Speaker 5: 1:23:06

Thank you for tolerating us.

Speaker 4: 1:23:08

So until next time. I'm Kelly McCubbin and I'm Peter Overstreet, and this is the Lowdown on the Plus Up. Ayo, thanks everybody, thank you.

Speaker 4: 1:23:33

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 at boardwalktimesnet. 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-upcom. We really want to hear about how you'd plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Our theme music is Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy by Kevin MacLeod at incompetechcom. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why?

Speaker 8: 1:24:46

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Speaker 1: 1:25:00

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