he Proust Questionnaire Cold Open

Kelly 0:00

Dallas Raymond McGuinness. Your career is legendary. You've been in such films as The Birds, Mary Hoppins, and Mr. Smith goes to Washington. We'd like to end this episode the way we end all episodes with the questionnaire invented by Bernard Peeble. We'll start with what is your favorite word? Wilderness. What is your least favorite word? Tobaki. What turns you on creatively, spiritually, or emotionally?

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Oh, that's easy.

Pete 0:48

The great sounds of the wilderness. What turns you off? Oh, uh that would be people who don't keep their hands and feet inside the car at all times.

Kelly 0:59

What is your favorite curse word?

Pete 1:01

Dang damn it.

Kelly 1:03

What sound or noise do you love?

SPEAKER_02 1:06

The sound of one of those reliable trains coming around the corner. What sound or noise do you hate? Oh, uh that'd probably be the sound of them pesky little varmits, the beavers chewing on the trellis.

Kelly 1:19

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Pete 1:23

I think I'd be happy becoming a real estate agent at a low money down real estate scheme.

eet The Hosts And The Ride

Kelly 1:29

What profession would you not like to do? Running a theme park. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates? Hang on to your hats, partner, cause this year's the wildest ride in the wilderness! 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. Hey Pete! Yeah. What are we talking about today?

Pete 2:40

Well, today we're gonna go back to Disneyland and Disney World. We're going to be exploring a ride that is uh has twin sisters, as you'd like to think. Disney World and Disneyland have very similar attractions. They have their own flavor, just like how many rides are different between parks. But this is probably one of the first of them, one of the best of them. We're talking about Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Kelly 3:04

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. There's even variants in Tokyo and Paris, too. Absolutely. The Paris one goes under a river.

Pete 3:11

I know.

he Frontier Thesis And Mythmaking

Kelly 3:12

Yeah. I'm jealous. I know it's it's super crazy. Well, I kind of wanted to. So let me let me paint a picture for you. Paint away. 1893. Okay, 1893. 1893, Chicago. Okay. The World's Columbian Exhibition. Ah, yes. I believe that would be the White City. Yes, indeed. Yeah. The infamous White City. You know, we're always talking about the 1964 World's Fair, but let's talk about this one for a minute.

Pete 3:36

Right, which actually was a World's Fair.

Kelly 3:38

Yes, it actually was a World's Fair. It was a World Fair. Unlike the 1964 New York World's Fair. The World Columbian exhibition in Chicago. It Buffalo Bills Wild West show was there. George Ferris had his very first observation wheel there. And in a small corner of the fair was a series of academic historians who were giving lectures, basically to each other.

Pete 4:06

Well, that's as often they do, but go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly 4:09

And at the end of the day, late in the day, a very hot day, Mr. Frederick Jackson Turner stands up to make a speech. He's in his early 30s. He's a he's a professor at the University of Wisconsin, I believe. He stands up to make a speech that is going to change the way Americans view history, particularly the history of the West, almost forever. Okay, go ahead. He makes a speech on the significance of the frontier in American history. Now, we've talked about this a little bit before, but it it really comes into serious play here with Big Thunder Mountain. And I know it's a big stretch, everybody, but bear with us. These are where the seeds are planted. This is where the seeds are planted. He makes this speech. Nobody notices it. It's late in the evening, it's a very hot day. People have been listening to dry academics all day long. Drinking pink lemonade, which we'll talk about later. The next day the newspapers mentioned that there was an event there, but they don't mention his speech. Even Turner's father, who is with him, writes a letter home and doesn't mention the speech that he made. But within a few years, Frederick Jackson Turner becomes the most respected historian in America because of this one speech. Okay. Because what it does is it tries to explain who Americans are, how we got to be that way, and how it is a function of the literal land that we live on. Huh. So I will I'll I'll give us a brief overview of this speech, and then we can kind of move on. It will drop back in. I'm all a quiver, please. What the theory basically said was Americans are moving West, and the line of the Western expansion is a crucible. And he uses that word, a crucible. It is something that burns through everything we brought with us. Okay. Right? So, so aristocracy, aristocracy from England, the West doesn't care. Like you are you are going through the wilderness and you are surviving. Even like the people in the original colonies, as they start moving West, it doesn't care. It doesn't care that you have like a rich New England family. It's going to burn that off of you and you are going to become something that is purely American. Wow. It's a super interesting theory. Okay. Part of the reason that he was inspired to write this was because a census had just been taken. And they the census had said that we had now moved so far across the West that the frontier line was gone. So basically there was we had populated so much of the country that there was no clear delineation of where civilization stops and where wildness begins anymore. His concern was how do we keep defining being American if we're no longer having this struggle? It's a really interesting theory. And what it did was in a time of like massive industrialization, in a time of mass immigration, a time of really stringent, uh violent labor movements, it gave us something to unify over. Huh. Like we are Americans because we moved through the crucible of the frontier line. So really interesting, this became an incredibly popular piece. In spite of the fact that no one, when he originally delivered it, seemed to care. Within a few years, it had taken over history in America. Okay. And it started like moving through popular culture like mad. Okay. So what it started to do was as as we kind of moved into movies and books and stuff like that about the West, that's how they were this is the theory that those are based on. They are like a Red River. We're we're trying to get our cattle across this area and we don't know if we're going to make it. Right. Obviously, there's a ton of kind of junky westerns that sort of start this off.

Pete 8:52

Like big country. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, teach your grandmother to suck eggs.

Kelly 8:57

By the time we get to people like John Ford, who are extraordinarily talented filmmakers, he's also.

Pete 9:06

I'm not making fun. It's just I just like how we've we've totally negated everybody before him. Yes. Well, this is we'll get into that.

Kelly 9:16

So we we start moving into the the age of the Western. The Western start to pick up in the 1910s in early, early, early silent film. And we're actually going to run into a little bit later some of the earliest stars of silent Western films when we meet Mr. Hoot and Miss Helen Gibson. Oh, I know where this is going. Yeah. Popular culture just embraces this. And there's American exceptionalism. It is totally just jibes right into it. And it's interesting because it is a secular version of religious manifest destiny. So there's no God pointing his finger at us and saying, Hey, you are great because I say so. What's happening is you are great because you survived the land. Okay. Super interesting. Yeah. Problematic. Yes. In about 10 years. In a nutshell. In about 10 years, Turner himself starts to go, hang on. I may have gotten some things wrong here. He starts, he he reaches a point where he won't defend the theory anymore. Then later he starts trying to write what he had hoped would be his magnum opus, refuting it, and saying, actually, I was kind of wrong about that. And he never finished it. He passed away. And part of the reason that he didn't get farther along was no one wanted to let go of his original theory. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right, because it suited them. It suited them, absolutely. It was it was utilitarian history. It was history that served what people wanted to believe right then. But he began to realize hey, there were actually already some people there. There were clearly Native Americans there. The Spanish had settled quite widely across the West. Oh, yeah. What he also figured out was I st I realized that my view of being American was exactly what my New England upbringing was like. Sure. So he's like, I just assumed that when I saw these people that had moved to the West who were like New Englanders, that that was what Americanism was like. And he, to his credit, realized turns out, if you look at the people who were newly from Ireland who moved across the re the West, they still seemed like Irish immigrants. Oh, yeah. When he people from other countries or other cultures, when they moved across the West, they still seemed like their original culture. This whole crucible burning everything off idea was just because he was a little myopic about it. And he saw, like, hey, New England, that's what America's like. Right. Right. But no one wanted to hear it. And yet, this theory took such hold in popular consciousness that we built up an entire mythology around it. Oh, yeah. This is the reason that a lot of early American Westerns are um not kind to Native Americans. No. And and we course correct sort of later, but this is the reason that we have this mythology of the cowboy as it is. Yeah. It's not because it was true. It's because Turner's theory suggested that it ought to be true.

esterns Evolve And Disney Follows

Pete 12:40

Right. The romanticism of the cowboy trying to be something more akin to, say, the Japanese samurai or a chivalrous knight of old. Absolutely. Certainly emboldened by writers and illustrators like Howard Pyle and N. C. Wyeth and Louis Lamore.

Kelly 12:57

Absolutely. Yeah. My dad's favorite books. In fact, I think the only books my dad ever read were Louis Lamore books. He just loved them.

Pete 13:07

Yep. Yep, yep, yep. And also that the and the actual West, the factual West, was also rife with that type of legend building. I mean, this is one of the reasons one of my favorite Western films is Unforgiven. Yeah, terrific. And not for the main plot. It's the subplot that pops in. But halfway into the film, you've got Richard Harris as English Bob traveling with this great in that movie. Mr. Beauchamp, who's this little author who's writing a dime novel about him. Yeah. And what he's getting is this filtered view of English Bob being brave and hello, I think there should be a monarch in America. And then he's confronted with a real Western sheriff in the form of Little Bill. Yeah. Played by Gene Hackman. Yeah. And gets the absolute crud knocked out of him. And Beauchamp is suddenly gets exposed to the real West. Yeah. And it's a real like Beauchamp is actually, to me, one of the more important characters because he's supposed to be us.

Kelly 14:10

Yes.

Pete 14:10

He represents and and this notion that Turner had introduced of this romanticism of the West and just writing dime novels like the Duke of Death, that kind of stuff.

Kelly 14:20

Yeah, and that and that we were triumphant over it. We were not triumphant over the West. We made our way. We did some awful things. We did some good things. Yeah. But there was there was no crucible there.

Pete 14:33

No, no, no. We were the tapeworms that kind of shaw shanked our way across the across the plains towards California and then just never really got nobody actually gave the antibiotics. It just kind of settled in.

Kelly 14:49

Yeah, that's awkward.

Pete 14:52

And don't get me wrong, I love Westerns. I love I love the romanticism and I like the realism of it as well. I'm fascinated by the old history of it and the stuff that was successful, the stuff that wasn't. Yeah. It is part of our history. There was a time when we get to the 50s, the 40s and 50s, when the Western movie becomes the dominant genre. Absolutely.

Kelly 15:14

In all forms, like on in movies, on radio, in books. The Western is absolutely ascendant. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Pete 15:24

Yeah, it dives off a little bit in the 30s. Yeah. And then it re-emerges at the end of World War II. And I think some of that has to do with this collective notion of trauma in the United States of having to face a war, having to face the horrors of that war and go, I want to start all over again. Just like Great Grandpappy did when he was Shawshanking his way across the plain. Right. Like a tapeworm.

Kelly 15:47

Turner's theory fits right back in there. Like we come back from seeing these horrors overseas. Yep. And and and feeling incredibly traumatized. Yeah. And we come back and we're like, but we have this unifying theory of who we are. So we we dovetail right back into it. And I think you're right. Like after World War II, the Western gets more popular.

Pete 16:09

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 16:09

And we we move forward into like the into the 50s. And the the early 50s is arguably the height of the American Western. It's the pinnacle of it. And this, of course, is the point at which Walt Disney is building Disneyland.

Pete 16:28

Right. And he's also continuing his branch of live action film films and television television films. Yeah. I think he did he do Rob Roy or something like that. He did, yeah. And that was like his first one outside of America. And then he did Treasure Island. Yeah. Why do we think pirates talk like that? Right. So in September, when you have Talk Like a Pirate Day, you're actually talking like Robert Newton, who's speaking in a dialect from where he grew up that is actually more authentic Elizabethan than any other out there, apparently. Right. So it's talk like Robert Newton Day. Oh, you're talking like Long John Silver. I sit at the table if you kindly be Armin.

Kelly 17:07

Yeah, as we move forward, he's leaning into the live action movies. Yep. He's starting to make the documentaries that are winning him Academy Awards. Yep. True Life Adventures. True Life Adventures. Okay, good. And he's so he's doing those and he's starting to plan Disneyland. Right. Now, Walt grew up, he's in the sweet spot of the Turner Theory. Like he that is what he thinks the West is, but there's push and pull there. Now, as we start to talk about Frontierland, so he he thinks that this cowboy story is pretty much true, but he doesn't totally think that. No. And you can see that in a couple of different places. One place you see it is in Davy Crockett.

Pete 17:49

Uh yes.

Kelly 17:50

Davy Crockett is Go ahead. Davy Crockett is if Davy Crockett hadn't been as big a hit as it was, Disneyland likely never would have been built.

Pete 18:02

Agreed.

Kelly 18:03

Absolutely. But one of the things you see in Davy Crockett is Disney and his writers and his directors beginning to reinvent the relationship of the wilderness and Native Americans in the wilderness. Not completely, but there are moments. And one of the most interesting moments that happens in Davy Crockett, and believe me, folks, we're getting to the ride. I'm leading up to Frontierland.

Pete 18:29

Yeah, again, we're planting the seeds of why this came about.

Kelly 18:32

Yeah. Yeah. This is a deep dive episode. Yeah. Stick with us. There's a lot about Big Thunder Mountain that is a crux of the change. But there's an episode where Davey goes to see Andrew Jackson and tries to talk him out of his Native American purge policies. I mean, this is shocking. It is. Yeah. That it's even addressed at all. And it's addressed with kid gloves, but that is what he's doing. He's trying to stop the president of the United States from attacking Native Americans. What's really interesting is that after Frontierland is built, you know, they build a fort on Tom Sawyer Island that I think is uh occasionally called Fort Langhorn, sometimes it's called Fort Clemens. And there are windows in some of the rooms where they just put up mannequins of like scenes. Yeah. One of the scenes that's there is that. It's Davy Crockett talking to Andrew Jackson. So there's push and pull there. Okay. Like there's there's something happening, and and Walt's in tune with what's going on, kind of. I I mean he he may not intentionally be, but he seems in tune with what's going on with the Western elsewhere because it is reinventing itself.

Pete 19:50

Right. Oh, there it is. I'm looking at a picture of it. Weird little wax figure at Fort Wilderness on Tom Sawyer Island. And there's and there's Andrew Jackson. Yeah. Covered in dust. Looking. He's got he's got his like a look looks like a crutch or something like that up on his desk there. He's got a quill pen. Right. Looking all stern and stuff, his dusty old boots covered with the dust of Anaheim. Looks amazing.

Kelly 20:15

Yeah, and it's it's it's something that he put that.

Pete 20:22

It's something. That he put that scene in. It's important that he did that. Yes.

Kelly 20:27

So what's going on in the modern Western is right around that time, and it's literally during the planning of Disneyland, the modern Western's beginning to turn around and become the revisionist Western.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Yeah.

Kelly 20:41

And John Ford's one of the people that's leading the way. John Ford himself seems to be questioning some of the films he made earlier, obviously with the searchers. Oh my god. Well, yeah. And everyone, if you haven't seen The Searchers, go see The Searchers.

Pete 20:53

It will it it will shock you a little, but it is despite some of the cringe of it, it's actually a very fine film. Absolutely. And one of my favorite quotes from John Ford about that film was during an interview he had with a French uh film historian who asked him, Monsieur Ford, You were working on the Somme. And he's he's standing in a director's chair. He's got his army fatigue jacket on, he's got his eye patch, and he's smoking a big cigar. And you can see the vast plains of Wyoming behind him. Yep. And the guy says, You film the searchers, uh, you have that fabulous shot with uh Jodwin in the doorway at the very end of the film and he's holding his arm. How did you film that? And he just goes, with a camera. He was such a jerk. He was such a jerk. But he was no nonsense and he did understand or something. And he did not suffer fools gladly.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

No.

Kelly 21:47

He did not want to deal with you at all if you were an idiot. And then, of course, you know, after the searchers, there's the man who shot Liberty Valence, which reinvents the Western even more and has potentially one of the Most famous, greatest quotes in all a film, which is This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes the fact, print the legend. Nice. So films are reinventing themselves. They're starting to move away from Turner's thesis a little bit, or at least they're starting to kind of recognize that there were holes in it. Yeah. And Disney might be too. Sure. A little. You can you can start to see that. He loves Westerns, no getting around that. Right. But what uh the argument uh that I would kind of make about Frontierland is that it is mostly realistic. And and by realistic, I don't mean like the golden horseshoe looks like what a real bar from the mid-1800s would look like. It doesn't. No, no, no, no, no. But but to Disney's mind, sure. It is not cartoony.

Pete 22:56

No, he's trying yeah, he's trying not to make a caricature, even though it may be a romanticism, it's not a caricature. And there's a difference between the two of them. Right. A character is meant to tear down a fantasy, you know, a um fantastically driven, idealized view of it, is a completely different perspective as opposed to a caricature.

Kelly 23:16

Absolutely. And so, you know, you've got the the golden horseshoe review, which we we've discussed at at length, and everyone go back and listen to our golden horseshoe episode and hear us talk about how much we love Wally Bogue. No, the Golden Horseshoe is filled with performers who are doing a real act. And and in most of their cases, it was just the act that they were doing anyway. Right. They just put on a slightly different costume and just did it. Yeah. You know, the Mark Twain's a real steamboat. Yes, it is. Yeah. There's something I think really interesting about Frontierland in that when Frontierland tried to get cartoony about things, they would cut that section off and make it another land. So which has caused a weird retraction of the amount of land space that Frontierland has. Yeah. But I I think even the Mark Twain dock might be weirdly considered part of New Orleans Square, but I'm not sure about that.

Pete 24:11

It's on that border. Like it could be one or the other. You decide on which which shore you're landing on. Yeah. I've done that like at night where you go, okay, I'm gonna come from I'm gonna come from the north, you know, big thunder, yeah, get onto the Mark Twain, go around and then pretend going to the south, I'm a oh, I'm getting off of the docks in New Orleans. It doesn't work because Lily's petrified wood is right there in front of you. That's what she said.

Kelly 24:35

Hey oh so yeah, and then the the the feature ride in Frontierland was originally a thing called the Rainbow Caverns Mind Train that was rapidly turned into the mind train through nature's wonderland, which while it did have some comic elements, mostly designed by Mark Davis, who's gonna come up a lot later, it was based on nature documentaries. That's what they were playing off of. Yeah. Frontierland, interestingly, is maybe the most kind of down-to-earth realistic land that they built because Walt seemed to be actually wanting to do a history lesson.

Pete 25:15

This is as close as we're gonna get to historical reenactment.

Kelly 25:18

Yeah. It's in Frontierland. It's Frontierland, absolutely. And and I love that for it for a time. Ultimately, we're going to run into a point where we can't look past some of the historical issues that we have with this idea of the American West. Some at some point, we're going to have to just give up on Turner. Yeah. And and we I think that may be the struggle that we're kind of in right now.

rontierland As History Lesson

Pete 25:44

Several aspects of the West, because of the popularity of shows like Gunsmoke. Yes, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone later on. It would be still Fest Parker, but who cares? Yeah. It's the same dude. It's not even, you know, it's just that the bad guys are different now. Oh, it's Santa Anna and his troops this time around.

Kelly 26:02

Did you know, by the way, that John Ford wanted Fest Parker in the searchers? Really? He did, and Disney wouldn't let him out of his contract. So they made Daniel Boone instead, and he was very upset. He was very upset.

Pete 26:15

Maybe you should have had uh Burl Ives in there in the country.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

I told you I'd shoot, but they didn't believe me. Why didn't you believe me? Damn you, Chuck Connors.

Pete 26:25

So and what what's interesting is in Frontierland, and we're gonna get to the rides here just very quickly. Yep. In Frontierland, they start almost immediately with something that's easy to do is filling Frontierland with people. Yes. Cast members who are willing to dress up on Fort Wilderness, wearing their cavalry neck kerchiefs, the hats and the and the knee-high boots and so forth, walking around. Oh, where's Davy Crockett? He's somewhere around here. We're on the island of Island Island.

Kelly 26:55

You had someone playing Tom Sawyer.

Pete 26:57

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. But they also had gunfights. Yes. Now, this is when we talked about this briefly when we did our expose on shooting galleries. Yep. So another episode plug. But uh yeah, there were gun guys, guys listening at home. There were gunfights at Disneyland and people liked it. Yes, they did. Different era. Different era, yeah. Like today, then people just triggered. No. And I and I grew up with this kind of entertainment. So I like at first I'd be like, whoa, shock. And that's the point. It's to wake you up and go, whoa. And then you'd get into it. Like, yeah, get Black Bart. So they would have this whole thing with Sheriff Lucky taking on Black Bart. And Black Bart was this kind of smarmy looking dude with a bad glued-on goatee and a top hat. And he had a you know, and Sheriff Lucky kind of looked like John Aston, and then like his posse and a gang, forth. And they would shoot it out, and Black Bart would be wandering around with a pistol stuck in his belt. And sometimes Black Bart would fight Pecos Bill. Yeah. AKA Wally Bogue.

Kelly 28:00

Oh, and Wally Bogue and do his goofy stuff. And you know what's intriguing is none of this was planned by the park. No. This was just these guys who were like, you know, it'd be fun. Because they they had pistols, the Ed Cat pistols, because they use them in the show. Yeah, yeah. And they were like, let's try this. So they just started doing it. I saw a quote from Wally Bogue once where he said that they did it for a couple of years and people seemed to really love it. And then one day a guy, an administrative guy with the clipboard, walked up and said, Okay, we got you scheduled for a gun fight at 2 30 and a gun fight at 4 30. And Bogue was like, Oh, no, no, no, no. And he never did it again.

Pete 28:42

No, no, no. So you've got the human element. You've got that, but not a lot of that wilderness we're talking about. Yeah. And that's when we start entering into like the uh the stagecoaches. Yep. The Conestoga wagon. Westward Ho. Yeah. And yeah, the Conestoga wagons, which were an absolute kidney killer. Yep. Like people's sciatica went through the roof in 1956 because of the Conestoga wagon and the mule train with the mules that would bite you if they didn't like you. Yep, the pack mules. The pack mules.

Kelly 29:15

Yeah. When they started utilizing that area, which was pretty close after opening, but it got expanded considerably a couple years later, when they started using that area, it by far had the largest footprint of anything they were doing in the park. I mean, it was massive. It it it takes up like if you look at where Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in Disneyland is now, but then kind of go all the way over to the river. Right, right. And all the way down past like where Star Wars Land starts, like that's what you're talking about. Right. It was massive. For you know, just comparison's sake, if any of you were around long enough to have seen Cascade Peak, which was right on the rivers, the the Mine Train used to go around that. Okay. And that's where the name Big Thunder came from, in fact. Really? Yeah, because there were several different vantage points where you could see different waterfalls. Uh-huh. And one of them, and you can hear this in the Dal McKinnon narration, one of them was called Big Thunder. One of them was called Little Thunder. Uh, one of them was called the Two Sisters, because they never stop a babbling.

Pete 30:24

Yep. I can hear, I can hear Dal right now. Nature's Wonderland was it was literally just a romp through nature. That was it. You're in this train. Oh, and also while you're riding through, you're in these like cargo trains. Yeah. The cars in the back. And you're facing each other. Yeah, weirdly. It was weird. You're staring at other people, and you're like cracking your back and like turning around and trying to look at what's going on over here.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

What?

Pete 30:50

I think they upgraded that after not too long. So that was the first big thing. And it costs like 50 grand or something like that to upgrade all those cards. Yeah. So Walt had just done that, and then Walt kind of suggested to Mark Davis, one of his animators, one of the classic nine old men, the animator behind Tinkerbell and several other characters. Maleficently brilliant at it. Yeah, he was he was the guy. And he's uh very interesting. Kelly and I were talking about this earlier before we started recording this episode, and I kind of equated Mark Davis as being kind of the Jack Kirby of Disneyland, where like Jack Kirby was like, Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna make Captain America and the Hulk, nobody better change nothing.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

Yeah. Well, it's kind of Mark Davis. I made I made your childhood magical with Tinkerbell. Don't change nothing or sick Alice on you.

Pete 31:45

But yeah, he was he was kind of a cantankerous guy. You wouldn't expect that because he was actually like really funny. Like he had a really wicked sense of humor, and it came through in his drawings, and he really knew how to draw really good sight gags.

Kelly 31:58

He did, and and that's part of the reason that he moved over from animation where he was brilliant and well and needed. He moved over to theme parks because Walt started to realize from his original plans that there weren't enough focused scenes, there wasn't enough kind of funny stuff to do.

Pete 32:16

Yeah, there's any humor to it. Right. Like it was a lot of great stuff, but no whimsy. So when Mark went through, he like Walt sent him over to the park. He spent about a week there with sketchbooks and uh cameras and took pictures, kind of got the lay of the land, came up with all these gags, and Walt kind of gave him that look after he'd like put up all the pictures. Like, well, Walt, this is what I'd like to actually build for you. And Walt Walt kind of looked at it and went, You son of a bitch, I just spent 50 grand on this. You're gonna cost me another 50 grand. Yep. But we gotta do it because this is what is necessary. Mark Davis, above most of the other Imagineers, could just totally convince Walt with his sketches because they were just so lively.

Kelly 32:54

Right, and and it worked. Like the proof is in the pudding. Like he put some of the funny stuff in the mind train through Nature's Wonderland, which is a little more subtle than in the jungle cruise, but but still there's there's some funny stuff in there. And then, of course, later drew most everything that's funny about the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion.

Pete 33:13

Absolutely. And he was he was undoubtedly now, he didn't play well with others, and we'll get to that later, but he was actually very, very entertaining, very funny. So they revitalized, not only did they add the they didn't just add animatronics, they expanded the entire ride. First off, they got rid of the pack mules.

Kelly 33:31

Yeah, you know. Oh, a quick note about animatronics. Mindrain through Nature's Wonderland is the first time that Disney uses that term. But they are not animatronics. No, they're not. They're the same thing that you had on the early versions of the Jungle Cruise, where they were just mechanical things going in a cycle. Yeah. But that is the first time he used the term was to describe what they were putting in in the Mind Train.

Pete 33:53

There's something else too, which is the utilization of black light liquids. And and it's different than paint. We had uh when we did our Mr. Toad episode, we talked about the history of UV paints.

Kelly 34:06

Who drew Mr. Toad? Who drew Mr. Toad?

Pete 34:08

Mark Davis. Of course he did. There's a special section of when they go inside the rainbow caverns. Yes. And which you see this beautiful cascade in which these different these different pools of of glowing water are pouring in through the cave, but they don't mix. Right. And this was a special uh liquid dye effect that Claude Coates had concocted. Yeah. And basically the dyes are the pretty much the same dyes that you put in highlighter markers.

Kelly 34:38

Yeah.

Pete 34:38

And that's how it's able to be transparent. And it's just about carefully aiming where the water goes, painting the inside bowls where the water goes so that way they never seem to actually mix, even though the water's splashing all over the place. Right. It doesn't look like it. Yeah. It's really, really clever. The Rainbow Caverns is actually really, really pretty. And let's because I had this issue. Kelly now.

Kelly 35:09

The Lowdown on the Plus Up is a Boardwalk Times podcast. At Boardwalk Times.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 35:39

And another thing that actually made Nature's Wonderland really, really special was our good old buddy Dallas McKinnon. Dal McKinnon. Dal McKinnon. Who was a character actor. He's in The Birds. Yep. He's a bartender in the birds. He's in The Tingler, William Castle's classic movie, The Tingler. He's the projectionist who gets throttled by the Tingler right near the end of the film.

Kelly 36:01

Oh, I think you told me that before.

Pete 36:02

Yeah. He's in Mary Poppins. He plays a lot of cowboys. G go figure. He was also the voice of Gumbian Pokey. But he became, because of his ability to just kind of throw on this great, kind of crazy, eccentric voice. So you guys have all heard me do this prospector voice. Matter of fact, at the beginning of this episode, you heard me do it. What a weird character for somebody to specialize in.

Kelly 36:26

Yeah. But it is he just he sort of became the character. And he does the narration, the recorded narration for the mind train through Nature's Wonderland. Yeah. And then just keeps that character for when Big Thunder comes a little bit down the road. Absolutely.

Pete 36:43

Yeah. And he and he lived it. I mean, he was he was that I mean he looked like an old prospector in few years. Wonderful, eccentric dude. Yeah, he really was. But I, you know, I've always had a love for that voice. I mean, yeah. I I right near I when I was really little, I was like three. Yeah. That's when I got to ride adventures through Nature's Wonderland, you know, the mining train through Nature's Wonderland. Yeah. And I barely have any memories. I remember the spinning rocks. Yeah. I remember the painted desert going, ha ha, what a stupid joke. Right, right. You know, and I remember the the rainbow caverns that I loved. First off, it was cool. Yeah. It was air conditioned. You were going to get air conditioned for like maybe a minute. Yeah. Thank God. And sometimes in some of those hot Orange County summers, that really meant something. Right. You know, but I also loved the narration. There was just something about that voice that you liked. Like, here you go, folks. You've got to be able to keep your hands and arms inside the car at all times. And and I always equated that voice with the old West. That's that's my little take. Sure, you've got all these other Wild West sidekicks like uh Gabby Hayes, Pat Butram. Yep, Buttram. Oh, and you've got Stumpy from Rio Bravo and all these other great character sidekicks. I ain't seen you for nine on 30 years. Like I'm I'm thinking basically the bullets from Eddie Valiant's gun and Roger Rabbit. Right. But I I don't know why. My the thing that why we we have we've mentioned this before, maybe, but I every time that Kelly and I or anybody goes with me to Disneyland, I have to warn them like this is a compulsion that I have. I will get onto a ride and I will do whatever familiar spiel is going on in that ride as Dallas McKinnon. When hinges creek and doorless chambers and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls. And so that's the origin of the prospectors. Anytime you guys have heard me do the prospector, it's Dal. It's Dal McKinnon.

ature’s Wonderland And Dal McKinnon

hunder Mesa And The Dream Ride

Kelly 38:43

Yeah. No, we we kind of move forward like we we're you know, we we pass obviously the the tencennial at Disneyland. Mr. Disney passes away uh suddenly and unfortunately. Yeah they're starting to make plans for Disney World. A couple of things happen. Like everyone's sort of scrambling at that point, trying to figure out, well, what did Walt want us to do? They put Cardwalker in charge, also a kind of kind of brusque man. They put Cardwalker in charge and just start moving forward. One of the big centerpiece attractions that they're planning to build in the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World is a thing called Thunder Mesa with the Western River Expedition inside it. Oh man. This is the first attraction that Mark Davis has designed from the ground up. He is 100%. Like this is his baby. This is it. Like it and it is massive. It is. Every other thing he's worked on, he's been called in to either s spice it up or he's been given a chunk of it. This is the first time where he's doing it from soup to nuts. He's got this idea, and it is huge. Oh yeah. And it's going to dominate Frontierland. Yeah. So what the Western River Expedition is and what Thunder Mesa is, is a large, and as it sounds like a large sort of Arizona, New Mexico mountain looking structure. Yeah. That you would go in and there'd be multiple experiences inside. Like you could sort of climb up the mountain. On top of the mountain was a Pueblo village where you could see how crafts were made and sort of have an expanse of the whole park you could see from there. And there's little adventures along the pathways. Mark Davis referred to Pirates of the Caribbean as the Mercury program for audio animatronics, and the Western River Expedition as Apollo. He he was this was going to be his PS de Resistance. So the Western River Expedition ride is like from what you can see in the plans that were done by the time that it got canceled. Yeah. Um, which I assume is not a spoiler because no, it's not there. You know, it went it went through a whole bunch of different plans. But by the end, what the ride was was that you would go out from you know the bright Florida sun into this dark tunnel network, and you would emerge on the other side in this nighttime landscape. Stars and and you just and it was cool, which you know in Florida is important.

Pete 41:38

Yeah.

Kelly 41:38

And and you would get on a boat, and the boat would take you through these western scenes. Right. And you would have a narrator for the for the scenes. Nice. The narrator was an audio animatronic owl named Hoot Gibson. Of course it was. Hoot Gibson is my new favorite audio animatronic. Because he is the only piece of this that actually got made. They were so ready to build this thing that they built Hoot Gibson and put him outside the Walt Disney story in on Main Street. And he was a preview. And but it was it was interesting too. I'm gonna go on a little tangent and I'll come back to the right. It was interesting too, because Hoot was sitting there with a giant lit up big push-button computer panel in front of him. Right. And he would just sit there and sleep until someone pushed a button, and then he would wake up and start talking to you, and he'd talk to you about coming back to the Western River expedition when it opens next year. And then he would talk a little bit about the history of animatronics. And then if you can find film of this, it's a little tough because there's not much, but if you can find film of this, it's really weird. Because at the end, basically the computer panel kind of lights up sort of like a dance floor and plays this sort of mecho-like disco electronic music, and the owl's eyes kind of light up and he dances. Whoa.

Pete 43:11

Okay.

Kelly 43:12

Super crazy. So anyway, Hook Gibson was your narrator. You kept running into him in the same way that you kind of run into the Raven and Haunted Mansion. Sure.

Pete 43:22

And they just wouldn't let that go, would they? Like we need a bird to guide you through it. Don't stop trying to give our audience the bird, Mark.

Kelly 43:29

But you you went in this thing, um, you know, you went through some scenes, you suddenly got shot up a waterfall, and they'd invented this whole new technology where it was going to really, really look like you were going up a waterfall. Okay. Kind of not like it does in Pirates of the Caribbean, which it does not look like that at all. But so they you you go up to the top of the falls, and I just think this is such a beautiful idea. So hoots up at the top, and he I don't know if he says something, but but he gestures with his wing to the sky. And the stars start forming pictures. That's cool. And the stars rearrange into these caricatures of cowboys and cattle and songs playing. And then you f you drop down the other side of the waterfall, and suddenly you're in this cartoony, uh, very much in the style of the Pecos Bill cartoon land with like a cowboy singing and like cows singing along with him. You basically go through a whole bunch of scenes. There's like a gunfight that goes on over your head. You go through a Native American area where they're doing a shamanic dance, and the dance causes some sort of lighting special effects that then shoots you again down a waterfall. Oh wow. But this is a big one. This is like kind of splash mountain-y kind of waterfall. Yeah, yeah. So one of the most elaborate rides ever designed. And the Thunder Mesa installation is one of the most grand and elaborate thematic ideas that any imagineers ever had. Wow. It's crazy when you look at it.

Pete 45:04

It is very expansive. There's a there's a couple of documentaries out there that show a lot of the artwork. You can find a lot of documents on it. You can see the models that were built for. I think there's one uh behind the attraction on Disney Plus that goes into a little bit of this with their piece on Big Thunder. That's right. Yeah, I think they do. Extinct Attractions did uh some of this in one of their documentaries. They talked about what they wanted with Alice Davis waxing rhapsodic about some of the most cringeworthy jokes ever.

ony Baxter Enters Imagineering

Kelly 45:30

Yeah, so so the Western River expedition, it was it was a big thing in the pipeline. I mentioned that there was a secondary ride. It wasn't super fleshed out, but somewhere in the in the drawings, kind of on the top of the mesa and sort of going in and out of the mesa, was what looked to be a runaway mind train ride. Davis seemed to have some specific ideas about it, but most of those ideas were telling Tony Baxter to calm down.

Pete 46:01

Before we continue, now that we've dropped that name into the mix, let's go back to the building of another attraction that was a river attraction, which is Pirates of the Caribbean. Uh-huh. And while they were constructing that, they had to dig a huge pit. Yeah. Because it sits underneath the park. Yeah. When you're riding it, you are underneath the park. Yeah. There was a young boy in his teens. He got to start scooping ice cream at Disneyland. And he was already going, I really want to work here. Like this is this is what I want to do. He knew what he wanted. He knew what he wanted. And he would just, he just kept pestering people and pestering people. And this is Tony Baxter. And a young Tony Baxter got a look, he got to get a preview of Pirates of the Caribbean without any of the animatronics. Yeah. They were like, hey, you want to give it a shot? And he's like, Yeah. So we got on the boat and he went down the slide and stuff. And he's going around. And the guys are on the boat with him telling him this is what we're going to have here. This is what we're going to have here. He's like, this is amazing, just on its own. I think he went through it with Claude Coates. Yeah. Yeah. That would make sense because Claude took him under his wing as like his protege.

Kelly 47:07

Yes. Claude was his mentor.

Pete 47:08

And and Tony basically like started putting together drawings. He started asking questions. He started, he was a model builder. He was a very handicrafty person. Yeah. And he just kept pestering and pestering and pestering and pestering some more until eventually the imagines just hire the kid to shut him up. Get him, leave us alone. Jeez, who's this?

Kelly 47:30

Oh, Baxter again. The interesting thing was that he he kept coming in with portfolio pages, and they were like, Yeah, that's pretty good. Come back to us. And then someone mentioned that he built these weird sort of Rube Goldberg kind of marble path model things. Someone was like, Hey, do you have one of those? Uh-huh. And he went, he was like, I do. And he went and got them and brought them back. And that was what got him the job.

Pete 47:56

I know. It's so, but it was the ingenuity, the cleverness, the thinking of flow, all of those things.

Kelly 48:03

Yeah.

Pete 48:03

Um, he told me that story.

Kelly 48:05

We're gonna see him in a couple weeks. We're gonna see him in a couple weeks. Talking about the Indiana Jones ride at the Walt Disney Family Museum.

Pete 48:10

Oh man. I I think we should reach out and see if the museum will let us have like five minutes with him and put it on the put it on the air here. But I'm sure they're desperate to give us time without yet.

Kelly 48:23

Finally, the break we've been hoping for. The low down on the plus up.

Pete 48:30

Well, anyway, so Mr. O'Day, if you are listening, and if you are in fact moderating this thing, like I hope you are, put in a good word. Yeah. Or at least, if nothing else, we'll buy you guys some coffee and we can chat with you guys. And it was it was really, really nice to chat with him. He told me that story about getting the job. Oh, that's awesome. And how he got that. And uh without me prompting him, he was just like, Don't give up. It was it was his way of encouraging me to not give up on my projects and like just keep going forward. I kept past through him until they finally said yes.

Kelly 49:01

Is it kind of is it kind of like George Martin whenever you talk to him, he immediately sits down and goes, Ringo Star? Like he just has this thing.

Pete 49:10

No, he's he's what I love about what I love about Tony Baxter on a personal level is that he's very, very sweet, very generous with his time, because he knows that people have a thing for him. Yeah. But when you connect with him directly with something that isn't being nerdy, where it's and something that really interests him, yeah, he'll lock on to you and you two will go with that conversation. Oh, that's and we connected about interactivity. Yeah uh and we talked about um a bunch of a bunch of stuff. But actually, Big Thunder became one of the conversation pieces that we talked about.

Kelly 49:46

So the fact that um Tony by by all accounts is a very nice man makes the story that we're about to tell uh sad and and a little melancholy. It is.

Pete 49:58

So he he got into imagineering and got a job in the model shop. Yeah. And that's what that was his job. And working under under the great Claude Coates. That's right.

Kelly 50:07

Uh if you want to hear more about Claude Coates, we talked about him in our Mr. Toad's Wild Ride episode.

irates Pressure And Project Collapse

Pete 50:12

There's a semi-political thing that happened, but it's also a public thing. Because as they were working on Thunder Mesa, they were getting about to open up the park, and they opened up the park. Yeah. So they had opened Disney World already at this point. They were like, okay, we gotta, we gotta what do you think, everybody? And the public's reaction to it was where the hell is Pirates of the Caribbean?

Kelly 50:36

Right. Yeah, it was a big problem because you have to remember that this was the 70s. There was no internet, there was no way you could just kind of reach out and know everything that was going on. The only information you got about these parks was like travel brochures and what you saw on the wonderful world of Disney. Yep. And that was it. The information was very limited, and people got to Disney World and to the Magic Kingdom, which was all that was built yet, and were upset. And they were upset enough that it actually kind of freaked Cardwalker out. Yeah. I understand Walker and the Imagineers issue here. Like they they were like, when we're in California, we're nowhere near the Caribbean. We don't have piratey stuff here. Right. It's it's novel. But in Florida, we are closer. And in Florida, we have the Gasparilla Pirates Festival every year. The massive, massive festival that takes over. Is it Tampa? Yes. It's Tampa. And their feeling was well, Pirates of the Caribbean will be redundant for these people. Right. But it turned out it wasn't. No, it wasn't. They were very upset. Yep. So they had to suddenly redirect funds to make Pirates of the Caribbean in Florida. This is why it's so much smaller than the one here, is they hadn't planned for it initially.

Pete 51:59

Right. And it's actually so it's it seems kind of cursory, and that's because it absolutely is. Yeah. And they had to really pivot hard to try and change the look of it. They made it feel a lot more Spanish influence, very a lot more conquistador. And there is actually a lot more actual Caribbean in it. When you when you go to New Orleans, it feels a little bit more New Englandy. It feels a lot more like a Howard Pyle. Yeah. So but at some point we'll do an episode on pirates, but that's this is not that episode.

Kelly 52:25

But this is this is why we've got Hoot Gibson standing outside the Walt Disney story telling people don't worry, the Western River Expedition's coming. And there's a couple of things going on here. One is that Tony Baxter is used to working with Claude Coates. There's a much freer exchange of ideas. Mark Davis is not that guy. No. Mark Davis is I am doing the drawings and you are building the models as I do them. Right. And as the project went on, and Baxter would occasionally offer ideas about maybe what to do with that train that's in some of the drawings, Davis would clamp down and say, No, no, no, I do not want that ride taking focus away from the river ride. Right. And to be fair, the river ride was was the super elaborate one. I get it.

Pete 53:12

So it was good. It was it was it it by all accounts, it was a gonna be a great one.

Kelly 53:18

So we we ran into a couple of problems. One, and perhaps the biggest one was the the pirates problem. Yeah. The second problem was that we are reaching the end of Turner. We are reaching the end of people buying into that stuff. Oh, big time. And Mark Davis is a caricaturist as a cartoonist. Yeah. And there were concerns about Native American representation in his drawings.

Pete 53:46

Yeah, especially when you have a Native American, a drunk, Native American tipping his hat to a tobacco store Indian.

Kelly 53:54

It's a little rough.

Pete 53:55

Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of things. There's a couple things that are actually kind of sweet. Totally. But there's a lot of stuff where you just kind of go, that's outdated. That type of humor is outdated.

Kelly 54:03

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: The climax of the ride is intended as a celebration of Native American culture. Now you can argue whether it's an appropriate one or not, but that's what it's intended to do. Trevor Burrus, Sure. But they kept coming back to him and saying, hey, we need to tone this down. And his argument was, well, I make everyone a caricature. But it doesn't entirely fly. But he he did to his credit, he kept reworking it and kept reworking it. And as it as we got closer to them potentially picking this back up after pirates, the protests at Wounded Knee happened. Oh boy. So the the the largest, most visible Native American protests in in the US are happening. Right. Okay. And at this point, Disney is they're really starting to go, we do not want to get into this. No. And and I fair enough. Yeah. It's not that is not their place. No. So they have they have Davis reworking it and reworking it and reworking it. Finally, they start going, well, let's build some models. Let's see what this looks like. Sure. So they start building some models. Tony Tony Baxter is heavily involved in building the models. They get all this stuff up, and one day, the the everyone goes home for the evening and then comes back and someone has stolen all of the clay caricature models. All of them. Whoa. We still don't know what happened. Nobody knows what happened. Like we we we talk about Buzzy from Cranium Command being stolen. Oh yeah. Like this is much crazier. Wow. Like all of them gone. At this point, the project seems snake bit, right? It's just, even though it's it's Davis's kind of pièce de resistance, it's his big thing, it's just struggling. Yeah. And the nail in the coffin is Card Walker at some point, walks in the room with Tony Baxter and compliments Baxter on the model making. And Baxter says, I don't like it. Now this is this is a very, very strange thing for a young imagineer. He doesn't like the model or he doesn't like the compliment. He no, he doesn't like the model or the attraction. Whoa. Yeah. Okay. And he says to Cardwalker, I think what we should do. Oh boy. Is take this mind train thing and make it the attraction. Wow. And Cardwalker loves it. He loves it. Because first off, he's he's trying to shed all of this all of this dead weight that's been put around the Western River expedition. No, they've just got political stuff and financing stuff and the model, the figurines were all stolen, and they don't know what's going on. And and and it's going to cost like$60 million. And that's$60 million in the 70s.

Pete 57:14

Right.

Kelly 57:14

Like that's a lot of money. For comparison, Indiana Jones' uh adventure at Disneyland cost$100 million in like 1983. Right. So it's that's a lot of money. And here's this young guy who's been around for a while and people like him. And he says, I can do this for a fraction of the cost. I can give you the thrill ride that you need to compete with the things that knots are putting in, with the things that six flags are putting in. Yeah. And I I can eliminate all of the political headaches. Whoa. And and he doesn't really entirely make that full argument. I'm I'm projecting a little bit. But he does say, I don't like it, and we should do this with the mind train.

Pete 58:00

Sure. But those benefits are all there.

Kelly 58:02

They are absolutely there.

Pete 58:04

They are there.

Kelly 58:04

And and Cardwalker was a sharp enough dude to know that, yeah, this is a this is a financially better move. Whether it's an or aesthetically better move, I don't know. Oh man. So there's there's some real questions. Like, was Tony Baxter actually trying to sabotage Mark Davis because he he was upset about how he'd been treated? I doubt it.

Pete 58:28

I doubt it. That's not in his career. Yeah. It really doesn't sound like him. He can he he could be just as snarky as the other as any person, but that doesn't like that would take a level of real anger to make it that bad. It would, yeah. I don't see that in Tony, frankly. And I what that's not even me speaking as like a Disney nerd. Yeah. Like I I like Tony, I've met him, but I don't I I don't know him well enough to go like, I'm gonna defend him. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna defend a mistruth about him. He he just doesn't seem like that to me.

Kelly 59:01

Yeah, and most people around that scene that when asked about like, well, what what was he thinking? Like he's he's undercutting Davis. Most of them say Tony is was, you know, he was younger then. He's super enthusiastic, like ridiculously enthusiastic and a little politically clueless. And he he may have just not understood what he was doing to Mark Davis, the legendary animator.

Pete 59:28

Yeah, it really may have just been like uh I thought this was all like a I thought this was like a group effort. Yeah. You know, and we're all gonna we know when to say yes and no and whatever. It's whatever the project is. Maybe that was his take on it.

Kelly 59:41

And also very, very likely, he probably saw the writing on the wall. He he knew they weren't going to make the Western River expedition. Yeah. And he was trying to salvage some of it.

Pete 59:51

Yeah. But we won't know 100%. So, Tony, if you're listening, notice how we're trying to be even-handed on this one, Tony. Yeah, and and Davis never forgave him for the rest of his life. Yeah, and Tony tried. Well, Mark, Mark, someone I won't defend too hard because he he actually was pretty cantankerous and he was known for having a hell of a temper and not playing well with others. And this is very well documented in stuff like Rolly Crump's book. It's kind of a cute story, yeah. Where he talks about his conflicts with Mark Davis over the Haunted Mansion, yeah. And also in the animation world, he was part of Walt's inner circle. He was one of the nine old men, so damn it, he's pretty much as good as Walt.

Kelly 1:00:31

Yeah.

Pete 1:00:31

And I think that that caused a lot of conflict, and sometimes it worked. Yeah. And in this case, I don't think it actually served Mark.

Kelly 1:00:40

Yeah, I I I I I agree. It's super unfortunate. Tony Tony tried for years and years and years to make apologies, and Davis wouldn't have it. He went so far as to take elements from the Western River expedition and put them into Splash Mountain, which Tony Baxter also designed. Right. He he uh you know the plunge at the end of Splash Mountain is very much the same thing that was supposed to happen at the end of the Western River expedition. The train going through the scene was straight out of Davis's design. And Splash Mountain saved most of the characters from Davis's final project, America Sings.

Pete 1:01:20

Yeah.

esigning Big Thunder With Computers

Kelly 1:01:21

So he thought he was paying respect to Davis. Davis didn't buy it. Um, sadly, they never reconcile. So that brings us to the actual ride we're supposed to be talking about today.

Pete 1:01:32

Right. All of that backstory that got us through there is is literally just like, okay, here we go. There were two people that we need to talk about who are behind this ride, actually. First one, obviously, is Tony Baxter. And the other one is actually an engineer named Bill Watkins. Bill Watkins' job was to make it work. Tony had built his little miniature bits of his models and so forth. And there's an interview in which he's talking about designing it, and basically he would build a model and he would do the designs, and then he would send it over to uh Bill Watkins. Bill, I guess, had some sort of computer algorithm that would actually calculate is this particular bank enough for the train to not go off the tracks? Is this going to generate enough force to get us up over through this hill and around? Yeah. That kind of stuff. And sometimes the computer program would say, hey, that one works. No, that one doesn't. And it was this back and forth trial and error of going through the whole piece. The project was put on hold in 1974, and the personnel became diverted to work on the construction of Space Mountain. Yeah. So he was he was utilizing a lot of his experience, I think, within the department, going, that's what's working for Space Mountain. Let's not make this mistake here. Let's stand this out like tremendously because it was Space Mountain was expensive and it was a thrill ride. What's interesting is this is the first ride at Disney to actually be assisted in design using computer technology. Oh, interesting. So, because again, you have the merging of engineering because you've got the trains and you have to make it all work. You have to figure out what the space is. Is this going to be too much centrifugal force? Yeah. All of that. But it really, really worked out. John Hench, the imagineer John Hinch, had a book out called Designing Disney. Yeah. And it's this, it's almost like a textbook for how to design a theme park. As a matter of fact, I've taught some classes on theme park design, and we use that as our textbook, along with another book, Imagineering, a Behind the Scenes Dreams Look of Making the Magic Real. It says by the Imagineers, but who knows? There was a really writer of some. But anyway, in it, there's a section on it. So if you have a copy of this book and you're listening to this at home, turn it page 43, and there's an early piece of concept art. There was going to be an animatronic of a guy ringing, you know, he's like a conductor going, Don't go that way, and he's ringing a bell, like, Don't go that way. Yeah. But the guy's name, the artist's name was John DeMaze, I believe, if that's pronounced correctly. Uh, but anyway, they have a uh the story, because every ride is based off of a story. Story first. That was John Hench's things. Write the story first. Here's what the story initially was for Big Thunder. Okay. I mean, it's pretty weird as it is now. It is. But this was like one of the the this was like the pitch story that got it going, okay?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:29

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad dates back to the wild and woolly boomtown days when every prospector west of the Rockies was looking for gold. The following is the tall tale heard tell by some of those prospectors who got it secondhand from old Sam, the last of the Big Thunder miners.

Pete 1:04:47

Yes, sir. It's 1840, and around these parts things got pretty near quiet as the hanging tree on Sunday after the Big Thunder mine tacked out. One day, there ain't none richer. The next, even a ghost wouldn't have had much to inherit there. Things got minded busted up and rusted down inside of Big Thunder. So Sam told me while slugging from a dusty bottle of old Imagineer, he was last prospector inside the mine.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:12

Fact is, poor old Sam took a spill and done landed belly up in one of them ore cars. Next thing he knows, the car takes off like a skinny coyote after a plump hen. Off he went, aheadin' for the mine. Seems like that old ghost mine came for life for Sam. He swears the rusted winch engine was a pumpin' and a wheezing. And just when he was thinking he must have bats in his belfry, there were bats. Then he sat up to see what he could in the dark, and there were pools of rainbow water and waterfalls, and plenty of them rocks the school mom calls stalactites and stalagmites. The walls of the canyon kept it coming in closer and closer at old Sam, and he yelled until he couldn't yell no more. All of a sudden, the car thunders to a pitch dark tunnel with Sam holding on for dear life. Coming back out of the other side, he spots a couple of dang skunks foolin' with blasting powder, like to blow the top off the whole dern mountain. Little ways away. Dangin' if there ain't a billy goat chawing on a stick of this stuff. But Sam didn't have no time to worry about that, because next thing he knows, he's whipping down Spiral Butte and heading straight back down to Big Thunder Mine. Sam figured he was going in and never coming out this time, with all that rumbling and a shaking and the rocks and coming down all around him. He closed his eyes tight. But the next thing you know, he was outside and hobballing down the track again. Right over Big Bear River Trestle Bridge. That old car finally squealed to a stop, right smack dab in the middle of Big Thunder Town.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:52

Sam just sat up, rushed off the dust, and said, Well, I ain't had this much of a whoop in the holler since the grub gang hit town.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:01

I just barely got out with my hide. Sam's amazing ghost story was told and retold over the years.

Pete 1:07:09

Because of it, no one was ever brave enough to even set foot near the mine until the day a bold young imagineer heard the tale and thought it might be fun to take a ride on old Big Thunder himself.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:21

Sure enough, he did, and the train turned out to be so much fun he decided to officially reopen the mine. Folks soon heard the news about Big Thunder and began to arrive there to take their own wild ride into the legendary runaway train.

Kelly 1:07:40

That's a really complicated story.

Pete 1:07:44

I'm literally reading it verbatim.

Kelly 1:07:46

I know, and the funny thing is, I think reading that story took longer than the ride does.

Pete 1:07:54

Well, you gotta get old Sham in there, Sam.

Kelly 1:07:57

Ultimately, I think the story got way, way, way slimmed down.

Pete 1:08:00

It did. You had to, because you only have, I think I don't know how the what the duration of it is, but you're speed, you're going at speeds of 35 miles an hour, so you're like zipping through it really fast.

Kelly 1:08:10

Yeah. Like a minute and a half worth of ride. And there's some sort of like hocum about the sacred spot to the Native Americans of the area, and the the desecration has caused ghosts to cause crazy things to happen, and the mine cars are just running on their own. And basically they they put in a station. So if you wanted to get on one of those mine cars that's just running on its own through the mountain, you could. Right. And that that's the the gist of it. What I love, so let's talk about the ride itself. I mean when you when you get on.

Pete 1:08:40

Can I do one more thing about the construction before we Oh yeah. Well, well, before uh hang on, because I know you want to talk about the construction. Yep, but I do want to make a note about that town you're talking about right there. Rainbow Ridge? Town is Rainbow Ridge. It's a remnant. Now it's been moved, so it's not in the same space where it always was, but it is a replica of what Rainbow Ridge used to look like for the adventures through the wilderness.

andbuilt Mountain And Ride Secrets

Kelly 1:09:04

It's not entirely a replica. Some of them are the actual buildings. Oh, that's fantastic. But not all of them. But Mind Train Through Nature's Wonderland was there for a long time. It was outside. You know, a lot the stuff took a beating. Yeah, yeah. So not a ton was salvageable at the end. But some of Rainbow Ridge was, and then it was it was fleshed out with other construction around it to make it all look seamless. Yeah. Also, they wanted to reuse some of the quote unquote animatronics from from Mind Train through Nature's Wonderland, but most of them were just beat to heck. Yeah. So the only ones that that actually made it in were the spinning rocks and the skunks. That's fantastic. Yeah, those those are original. Yeah. That's pretty great. So let's talk about the construction. Yes. Go for it. Do you know how they made the mountain structure? No. So they built it out of plaster. They were like, this is good. Then they built a slightly bigger version out of plaster. Then they cut it along, they sliced it up along three axes so that they could get like thin, thin views of it. And they took each of those views and traced out the structural components on a piece of paper. Then they went to the parade area, because the Disneyland one was the first one to be open because of the Space Mountain thing you mentioned. Right. Um, they went to the parade staging area at Disneyland and took those sheets that were each a slice of the interior and drew them on the ground. Wow. Then they brought out a dog-choking mother load of rebar. Whoa. And people handbent them. They would hand bend them and lie them on the drawings. And then once it was all done, they tie them together. Whoa. And they just did that for slice after slice after slice. And when they got a big enough piece, they'd hoist it up and take a look at it. And if it was good, they'd take those ties and they'd weld them. That's how they made that. Wow. Just hand bending the rebar. That's so cool. Yeah. Who needs computers?

Pete 1:11:14

Well, Tony Baxter, obviously. But but yeah, but the actual construction, yeah. This is one of those things that I love about Disneyland, especially even today, is just the more that stuff is handcrafted in that park, the more I am impressed with it. Absolutely. There's something about the artisanal quality, like digital effects, eh, okay. Digital animatronics, whatever. I mean, I'm really actually not that impressed. Yeah. But when you go, yeah, so this Rolly Crump carved the tiki's with a plastic fork from the commissary because they were too cheap and out of money to buy them actual tools. Yeah, that impresses me because you go, he carved that, and you look, you look at Maui's skin, you go, Oh my god, there's fork marks all over it. Yeah, yeah. And it works. So, anyhow, yeah, Big Thunder is uh it was beautiful. We you've got dinosaur skeleton sticking out.

Kelly 1:12:05

Oh, that is the uh one other piece that was original to the Mind Train. Uh nice. That's that those dinosaur bones.

Pete 1:12:11

Oh, nice, those are cool. Yeah, I've I've always loved that bit. It's so it's so great. So yeah, so in 1979, they opened it up. And I remember I remember the TV commercials. They would show the peak and then this lightning, lightning is about to strike, thunder is going to strike at Disneyland. Big thunder. Yeah. And it made it sound like this dangerous, evil thing, and it's like this hokey western theme. So but for 70s kids in 1979 who were obsessed with Kiss and Paul Lynn's Halloween special. This is like, you know, Thunder's about to strike. Disneyland. Or one step short of getting a Wolfman Jack.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:49

All right, baby.

Pete 1:12:52

The big thunder. Don't do that. Sure?

Kelly 1:12:55

Because maybe.

Pete 1:12:56

It could have worked. But no, he had a deal already by this point. He was the new horror host over Knott's Berry. An exclusivity deal.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:04

Yeah, mm-mm. They don't have any ugly people over here. Send all the ugly people to Disneyland. Yeah.

Kelly 1:13:10

So everybody. So CPO. Anyone who feels like you'd like to hear us do a lot more Wolfman Jack impressions, listen to our episode about not scary farm.

Pete 1:13:25

There you go. Yes. So so it runs for a long time, and it is a hit. It is a big hit. Yeah. Park resonance. Because you didn't have to wait in that humongous line inside of Space Mountain, which unfortunately.

Kelly 1:14:04

Everything's moved. If someone was in charge of Disneyland last week, they aren't anymore. And if you want to find out everything that's going on, come meet us at boardwalktimes.net. It's a beautiful design. The mountain looks great. You get in it. It is a fun runaway mind train ride, which I mean you've you've you've experienced these wherever you live. There's there's something that's like this with a lot of of really fun little like sight gags, much along the in in kind of the tradition of Mark Davis, really. Yeah. And one of the sight gags, which sort of leads to, and it was referenced in the story you read, is the goat chewing the dynamite.

Pete 1:14:56

Ah, yes. Which many of the legendary parts of Big Thunder is the goat.

Kelly 1:15:00

Yeah. And which means that we need to discuss the goat trick.

Pete 1:15:05

Okay, the goat trick. For all of our viewers, for those who do not know, there's probably probably a lot of Disney adults who totally know this, but we're going to talk about the goat.

Kelly 1:15:13

The goat trick is this. When you are riding Big Thunder Mountain, either in uh California or in Florida, because they're basically mirror images of each other. Florida had a little more room, so the ending, I actually think, is an improvement on the California one. It's a little less abrupt. But otherwise, they're pretty much the same. Though the exterior of the California one is uh uh designed after the Bryce Mountain hoodoos. Yes. Which just I can't even describe these. Go go look up the Bryce Mountain Hoodoos.

Pete 1:15:46

Yeah, they're fantastic.

Kelly 1:15:48

Whereas all of the other Thunder Mountains, Florida, Tokyo, France, are more designed after just uh kind of standard New Mexico mountain ranges.

Pete 1:15:58

Right.

Kelly 1:15:58

But so the goat track. You when you're on the ride, you crest a hill and you see a goat chewing a piece of dynamite. Yep. If as you are start heading down the hill and circling around him to the right if you're in California, to the left if you're in Florida, don't take your eyes off the goat. Yep. That's the goat trick. And the reason is that when you do it, there's something about the design of the ride that makes it feel way, way, way faster.

Pete 1:16:29

And also makes you feel very, very, very dizzy. Yes.

Kelly 1:16:35

So at your own risk, we please check with your doctor if you have any.

Pete 1:16:40

Inner ear problems, do not do this. Yeah, I don't know. Because I wrote it with somebody with an inner ear problem. She did the goat trick. Oh no. She was like, I can't do that ever again. That was awful. So it's an inner ear thing because you're so focused and you're turning and turning your head so fast and you got the centrifugal force of movement. Yeah. That it's just, yeah, it's a dizzying effect.

Kelly 1:16:57

The ride, it's it's super fun. At the end of each version of the ride, you're going up a final lift hill, and something's happening. It's an earthquake, it is a mystical experience with evil spirits. It is something. The Disneyland one, they've actually done some nice things with some projection mapping that they've added to it.

Pete 1:17:20

They did this like around 2010, 2011.

Kelly 1:17:23

Yeah, a while ago. And there's a little mist. There's these cool things that make it look like they're dynamite fuses racing past you.

Pete 1:17:31

Yeah, which is really cool.

Kelly 1:17:32

It's really nice, yeah.

Pete 1:17:33

And I think they're probably an improvement upon the earthquake, I think.

Kelly 1:17:36

Yeah, because the earthquake was a little it was confusing. What's happening? Um the Florida one is which is under rehab right now, I think is probably being given the same update, which is which is nice.

Pete 1:17:48

Which, if this episode comes out before then, it has actually been announced today that they've they've been giving a loose date of May of 2026 to be reopened. So by the summer, those refurbishments should be done and ready for our people at home.

Kelly 1:18:04

There's a lot of things about the Florida version that I like better. The for the because they're kind of cookie-cutter but mirror images, but um the Florida one does have a little more space. It does the ending of the California version does seem kind of quick to me. You you kind of come out of that exploding tunnel and suddenly you're it's over. And you're like, whoa, what happened? It's kind of a gentle slope to the dinosaur bones and the thing squirts you with water and you're done.

Pete 1:18:32

Right. And the commercial made it look like that was this was like the big loop-the-loop moment where you're gonna be like, well, now that's the big finale splash! Yeah, right. It's just kind of like you go past the you go past the dinosaur bones and that's that's what you get. Yeah.

Kelly 1:18:45

Spurt of water. The Florida one has a little more space, so the ending is a little more satisfying. Also, at night, the Florida Big Thunder is beautiful. Oh my gosh. Beautiful. After I was out there two Januaries ago after a huge storm, like like one of those, like we're clearing everything out storms. Um I was I went to the park after the storm, and it was almost empty in Frontierland. Like I turned in a circle at one point and saw no other people. That's cool. But I was standing there, it was quiet, and Big Thunder was lit up with a beautiful lighting package they got going on there. And it I was really impressed. I really liked it a lot. Yep. I tend to be very California-centric about the parks, but in this case, I think they did a great job.

Pete 1:19:32

So, what is your favorite part of the ride? We talked about the the things that are missing or the things that are kind of eh. Yeah. What's your favorite part of the ride?

Kelly 1:19:41

In in many ways, Dal McKinnon.

Pete 1:19:43

Uh he's delightful. Besides Dal.

Kelly 1:19:45

Yeah. I think uh I think it's just uh the it's sort of a whole package because you're you're floating through this um thing that is does very much resemble the old mind train through Nature's Wonderland. So there's a nostalgia to it. It's it's a nice, quick roller coaster, but it's not too crazy. It just it feels nice to me. That final lift heel, especially in California, looks so great. Yep. Um, I don't know. What about you?

Pete 1:20:12

For me, it's what I call the lean to the right corkscrew. Like I think this is after the second hill, and you start careening through. So this is like the fastest part of the ride, frankly. And you start entering into this corkscrew where you are going around and around in a circle. I think you zip around twice. Yeah. And what I love to do is I love to be in the right hand side of the car. Yeah. And I lean, because I'm like like Kelly, I too am a tall man. I'm over six feet. Yeah. And I lean to the right. And when you lean hard against the right, careful not to bop your head up against the wall there. Yeah. It it makes this, it's almost like the goat trick for me. Yeah. People say, oh, the goat makes you feel like you're going faster. I go, no, no, no, no. The corkscrew is where I lean to the right. Yeah. It's like, and it feels like it's going faster, faster, faster, faster. It's a lot more thrilling for me. Yeah. And that part I just really, really love. I mean, I just love the overall feeling of it. Yeah. I do too. The overall feeling of the whole experience is a lot of fun. But that one in particular is like, oh yeah, this is this is the way to do it.

ccidents Plus The Kidney Stone Study

Kelly 1:21:16

And you know what else we need to talk about? Oh. Is that Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is the only attraction that I know of that has a medical use. Oh, you turned.

Pete 1:21:34

Well, before we get to that, I I we'll we'll we'll use this as a lightening things up for just a second. We'll come back to this for a minute. Yeah. We do have to mention something because I'm sure there's going to be a couple people listening just to hear this fact, so we might as well get it out of the way. There have been two uh two documented incidents. Yeah. And it's a roller coaster. So things are bound to happen. It's not that this thing is falling apart or anything like that. It has it's very, very safe in general, but there were two incidents that happened on Big Thunder of a negative medical nature. One in one was in 1998 when a kid in the embarkment area got his foot caught between the car and the platform. Yeah. That was an injury. And then there was an incident in 2003 where a man named Marcelo Torres from Gardenia, California, was caught up in an accident where the cars detached from the locomotive on one of the climb hills. Yeah. He and a bunch of people ranging from ages nine to 47 were injured. But unfortunately, Mr. Torres did not survive the incident. So this is one of those infamous Disneyland things that like the park, no park likes to talk about the death in the park. No. But I'm bringing this up because everybody knows about this, or at least everybody has like, didn't this happen? Well, these were all mechanical failures that have bit long since been corrected. Yeah. So I'm saying this as a way to say, no, no, this is like one of the safer thrill rides out there. For sure. And for a lot of people that I know, this is actually the gateway drug to roller coasters. Yeah. For a lot of people go, I don't like roller coasters. Then you get them on Big Thunder, like, I fucking love roller coasters. Right? It's that type of thing. Okay. That negative part said, okay, let's talk about this. And there's a reason this guy is bringing this up.

Kelly 1:23:18

Well, it is actually one of the more interesting facts about this attraction.

Pete 1:23:22

But now I'm really connected to this. So do you want to tell them why? About a month ago, almost a month ago, uh, from recording this, uh, I went to the hospital because I had kidney stones. And it was probably one of the most painful things ever. And the first thing that this guy does is, well, we should go right on Big Thunder. Not how are you feeling about what's going on, but hey. I saw it as an opportunity. It was an opportunity. And it's a very good opportunity because in 2016, the Journal of America and Osteopathic Association they released a paper entitled Validation of a Functional Paleoclearenal Model. I don't know how to pronounce this crap. I'm not a doctor. A renal model for the evaluation of renal calculi passage while riding a roller coaster was published. Basically, pass your kidney stones on Big Thunder. Yeah. Because Dr. Warninger, the guy who wrote this, found that patients who had passed kidney stones after riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney World on vacation, including one who passed three stones on three separate occasions. Yeah. And they then this is an honest to God peer-reviewed medical study. 100%. They even built a 3D model of a kidney. Yes. Right. Filled it with actual urine and actual kidney stuff. Yep. And they put it on the ride. Be sure to keep your kidneys inside the car at all times. And they made it, they made the fake kidney ride the ride 20 times. Yeah. Can you imagine being in line for this ride? It's late at night. You've been waiting in line for an hour. Yeah. And you can't get in. Like, oh no, sir, you have to wait till the next car. What? Why? The kidney takes priority. It's like and it's like he's watching the kidney. Go, come on, little bugger, pass. Pass, you little guy, pass.

Kelly 1:25:15

And I think I think they may have done it actually more than 20 times because what they discussed. It was over 20 times. Yeah, what they discovered was where you sit on the train is is critical. Yep. If you are in the last car, the stones passed eight out of ten times. Yep. Eight out of ten times. That is a better result than going to the emergency room.

Pete 1:25:39

I really like after after Kelly mentioned that to me via text, I kind of went, wait a minute, how much money do I have? Like doctors don't go.

Kelly 1:25:51

They only tested Disney World. So we don't know if this is applicable to Disneyland, but it probably is.

Pete 1:25:57

One of my favorite notes about this is that they also did the study on Space Mountain and the rock and roller coaster starring Aerosmith as as uh test control tests. Yeah, just to see. They did not produce the same result at all. So it is Big Thunder that is, you know, you know how like how like people like throw pennies into the lagoon right by the dock. I think people should throw their kidney stones in there. Yeah. And like, here you go. Thanks, buddy. There it is. So we have like this whole thing of kidney stones. Welcome to Kidney Stone Canyon. Oh, like, there it is. So anyway. Yeah, but it's uh it is remarkable. Yeah. And the next time I start feeling feeling that urge, I'm definitely going into Disney World.

Kelly 1:26:39

I just I want to I'll go with you just to see you go. I need to be in the back car because I have kidney stones.

hy Big Thunder Changed Disney

Pete 1:26:52

So there are Disney so Big Thunder is such a hit. Yeah. There's a Big Thunder in Disney World, Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland, Paris Disneyland. It's everywhere. As a matter of fact, the sounds of Disney's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad were recorded and used as sound effects for the Minecar Chase sequence in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Wow. So you're actually like what looks like that would make a great ride. Well, guess what? You're hearing an actual ride. Yeah. Oh, like, okay, that's pretty cool. And they would later get its own Indiana Jones attraction in 95, but they were like, it's because of Big Thunder. They went, Yeah, let's do that. Which is kind of fitting because like Tony Baxter became the designer of the Indiana Jones attraction, the Temple of the Forbidden Knight.

Kelly 1:27:40

That's right. And and you know Tony Baxter designing Big Thunder Mountain is really the beginning of sort of the the next age of imagineering. It's it's very critical. A lot a lot of stuff changes at Big Thunder Mountain. One of them, as as we've discussed, is the moving away from turn. Thesis. At this point, Big Thunder Mountain is a ridiculous story. Yeah, no. It is no longer trying to be edutainment like the rest of Frontierland. It has moved beyond. And I actually think this is a good direction because it solves a lot of the problems that Frontierland has. And I there I wrote an article about it if anyone wants to read it. So it it it that is the first step of like Frontierland is moving beyond Turner very deliberately. Like we're we're we're treating the Frontier as a fantasy now. Right. And instead of it being a fantasy that we're treating as true. But also, that is the point where sort of the second wave of Imagineers is starting to fade. And we were talking about this earlier. We were trying to decide what are the ages of Imagineers. And I would argue that the that is where the Bronze Age, the third age of Imagineers starts, is right with the design of Big Thunder Mountain. Agreed. Yeah.

Pete 1:29:00

Agreed. Because it's a different mentality. I think, yeah, you had Space Mountain, but where Space Mountain is a ride in the dark with disco balls. Yeah. When it first opens up. Yeah, and it's great. They've enhanced it since, but that's essentially what it is. This is the one that actually melds that creativity of building an environment around a ride and having a story and having a land built around it. This is the th the first thrill ride at Disneyland that does that. So you're absolutely right. Like this is the beginning of a new era for Disneyland attractions from then on. This leads to Star Tours. This leads to the Indiana Jones ride, and this leads to Carsland test drive. Everything else that like Big Thunder is kind of the benchmark to say this is when it starts. We're now entering into a whole new era of designing these rides that are still whimsical. Yeah. There's elements like the goat chewing dynamite, the possums spinning around on the tree. Yeah. Overall, this is the first time that it was done.

Kelly 1:29:58

Yeah. And it's it's a new generation of imagineers that are led by Tony Baxter. Tony Baxter becomes the Imagineer of Record at this point. Yep, absolutely. He's he's he's the person that everyone's gonna go to. And then he takes off. He's like Indiana Jones, Splash Mountain, New Fantasyland. Uh yeah, he's just he he becomes the the new centerpiece of the company from point on. Yep.

lus Ups For The Finale And Halloween

Pete 1:30:24

So uh we are now at the point of this uh broadcast, I think now, in which scared. Yeah. Be very afraid, um, in which we throw out any any notion of budget or safety or good thinking, and we come up with a plus up for this attraction. And I'm gonna hand this one over to Kelly. Oh, I did it first last. Kelly, what is your plus up for this attraction?

Kelly 1:30:51

My plus it I so it depends because obviously there's four different Big Thunder Mountains, and they all kind of do different things. So I have a couple. One is the Florida one needs the new final scene package, which I think it's getting. So let's just say, hey, I got that one.

unknown 1:31:11

Right.

Kelly 1:31:13

If that's not what they're doing right now, then that's what they need to do, is they they need to fix the final scene in the way they fixed it at Disneyland. Sure. The Disneyland version, my plus up is that they need to figure out a way to carve out a little more space for the end of that thing. It just it it is a little bit of a disappointment when you come out of the giant explodey cavern and it's just kind of this gentle slope down. If they fixed that, it would just be perfect. I agree. So I know those are those are kind of simple technical things, but I love the ride so much that I can't think of much I would want to change with it.

Pete 1:31:53

Yeah.

Kelly 1:31:53

Yeah.

Pete 1:31:54

What about you? Well, I I along those lines, I I totally see that. I could actually see that spilling over almost being the walkway that leads now from Batuu. It used to be Big Thunder Ranch, uh, but from Batuu over to Frontierland. Yeah. That walkway could actually be rocked over, so it's more of a tunnel for people. Yeah. And have the train run overhead and then down and around into rivers of America. Yeah. Very much like how Nature's Wonderland used to, because you've got this unused tunnel. Yeah. Sometimes they have a bear snoring on the inside and sometimes they don't. Yeah. You've got the mechanical fish that every once in a while will go blitz in old Nature's Wonderland. Yeah, it's these little throwback bits. Yeah. Have it go through there again because right now that's just kind of like this placid little place for the Disney ducks and cats to sleep. Right. And if you're going to use it, and if you really want to have that finale, have it come through and make the dinosaur, you make the in enhance the dinosaur experience. Yeah. If you really wanted to make it clever, you actually incorporate the dinosaurs from um Journey to the Grand Canyon in the primeval world. Yeah. So the dinosaur bones and stuff like that, those are the those are the dinosaur borns millions of years later. So they're dead and they're in Big Thunder implanted within the rocks. But there's there's the Stegosaurus, there's the baby triceratops, there's the pterodon, but they're all in bone form and you're zipping through and around them. And there's your big finale, is just dinosaur alley, basically.

Kelly 1:33:28

Oh, that would be awesome. And then you could go into the the prehistoric world and and just put in the Bryce Canyon hoodoos. Just in the background. Yeah, just in the background. So if someone was looking, they'd be like, hey, I figured something out.

rap Up And Listener Messages

Pete 1:33:40

Yeah, there's a connection here. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I mean, that's and that's uh my other plus up. I actually have two. That would be one. My other plus up for this would be for um the Halloween enhancements that they do. Yeah. Which is actually to play up the ghost train element a little bit more. Yeah, yeah. And to actually make it add stuff to it. Yeah. Not much, just a couple of enhancements, some simple ghost effects, nothing too scary, but definitely like fun and like some skeletons and hearken back to Mark Davis' designs for his riverboat attraction, but they're all in skeletons. The skeleton form or ghost form. It's a little bit of Mark Davis. So it's almost like some of the 999 happy haunts have escaped from across the river there in New Orleans Square and have jumped over to Big Thunder. Yeah. And are there just for Halloween? Yeah. Very much like how Jack Skellington infests the Haunted Mansion from September to February. Yep. I'm sorry. I know every too long. I know this is too controversial controversial, I'm sure. There's a lot of people who love Jack Skellington. I love Jack Skellington. I think he needs his own ride. Yeah. I think they I think that needs to be its own attraction. Totally. Because there are times when I don't want to see Christmas in Halloween. Yeah. And I don't care if it's night before Christmas. I don't want to see it. Right. And that that bugs me. And that that's always bugged me. And I and I and they do it for too long. I want my old school haunted mansion. Just give me the classic old haunted mansion. But anyway, so if I can't have that, then let's have some Halloween over in Frontierland or Dia de las Muertes kind of style. Whatever it is, or Coco. Yeah. Like add characters from Cocoa into there. Yeah. That kind of stuff. But that would be my and but I wouldn't make it a permanent attraction. Yeah. Like keeping keeping it simple, keeping it pure is one thing, but it would certainly make those nighttime rides a lot more fun. During the day, it's fine, but at night, the ghosts come alive. Yeah. Big thunder ghost, you know. And Disney, if you're listening and you want to do this because we have predicted your stuff before, and you're looking for a voice for one of those ghosts, and it's going to be Dallas McKinnon. I know a guy. I know a guy who can do the voice. All right. Well, that's our really long episode. Yeah, what a what a road, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:09

What a wild railroad that was, partners.

Pete 1:36:11

Anyway, I'm Peter Overstreet. And I'm Kelly McGubbin. And thank you very much for joining us here on The Lowdown on the Plus Up.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:18

All right.

Kelly 1:36:24

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 at Lowdown on the Plus Up on Blue Sky, Mastodon, Instagram, and all the other socials. Or you can 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 Incompotech.com. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why? Because we like you.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:45

As we head for the wilderness, a couple of suggestions. Please stay seated at all times and keep your hands and arms inside the train. The animals get mighty hungry. And uh, no smoking, please, because we don't want to start a forest fire. Now, beyond these hills lies nature's wonderland. You're apt to see a whole lot of wildlife, so keep a real sharp hunter's eye. As we come out of this first tunnel, we'll be entering Beaver Valley. Looks like the beavers are building another dam. Yes, sir, and they're really busy as a busy as a beaver. Them little mermits over the tunnel must be a whistling to all you pretty good. If you've never gone beneath a waterfall before, then get it. We're coming up on the world.