Welcome And The Plus Up Premise

Kelly 0:44

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.

Pete 1:23

Yeah.

Kelly 1:23

What are we talking about today?

Pete 1:25

Well, today we're gonna go back millions and billions of years ago. Billions of years. Days of cavemen. Yeah. Cavewomen. And at all.

Kelly 1:38

Stroglodytes. Why do the cavemen all sound like Wolfman Jack?

Pete 1:42

Well, they don't. No, no, no, no. I'm looking for Jimmy Castor here. Today we're gonna actually go to Santa Cruz, California. The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Yes, indeed, with a specific goal in mind. Because not only are we gonna go to the boardwalk, we're gonna go all the way to the end of the boardwalk. We are. And tucked away down the bottom is probably one of its most popular and most famous attractions, apart from their uh wooden roller coaster, the giant dipper. And the loof carousel. And the loof carousel, as featured in Lost Boys. Right? It's actually the cave train. The cave train. Yes, indeed, the cave train.

Kelly 2:21

We have an unabashed love for this silly ride.

Pete 2:26

I can hear bis Mr. Shane going off my head.

Kelly 2:30

Yep. Beer is Mr. Shane.

Pete 2:32

I can never say it right because I always think of like, hey there, Mr. Shane. Like when I was a kid, that's all I would hear. My apologies to all of our Berlin listeners. My German is terrible.

Kelly 2:43

So

Hiatus Notes And Don Iwerks Tribute

Kelly 2:44

before we get into that, uh a couple of things. Yes. Uh we've we've we've been away for a little bit. Uh-huh. Consider it our summer hiatus. Yeah. It wasn't relaxing.

Pete 2:55

No, it was not. For those who do not know, our studio was relocated. We are now recording in a whole new location.

Kelly 3:02

So we're back, and thank you for sticking with us, everybody. Um also wanted to talk briefly. Don Iworks passed away recently. The fabulous Don Eyeworks. The fabulous Don Iworks. And I had a thought. So if you don't know who Don Eyeworks was, his father was the great Ub IWorks, potentially the guy who created animation. Animation. Well, sort of. It existed before, but he codified it into a form that stuck for a long time.

Pete 3:30

Definitely the grandfather, the animated short as we know it. Yeah, that's right. And the father of Mickey Mouse.

Kelly 3:36

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we we can argue that he co-created Mickey Mouse, but he probably did a little more than that. A great animator. He was with Disney for a long time. He drew much of the early Disney stuff almost single-handedly.

Pete 3:51

Yes, he did.

Kelly 3:53

Yes, he did. Then he left Disney, came back for a while, and ended up doing special effects. But Ub's son, Don, picked right up where Ub left off. He started working with his father for with the camera techniques. He worked seriously on that sodium vapor technique. I was just about to mention, didn't he contribute to the sodium vapor process? Did he built the original circle vision cameras, the big round ones that they put on the bottom of helicopters and flew around? He uh and his dad uh figured out ways to make those things actually project in a way that the film could run 12 hours a day without stopping. Uh he did a lot of work uh beyond the camera work for both the movies and the theme parks. Evidently a very great guy. And and Don's daughter, Leslie Iworks, you've probably seen her name in the news quite a bit lately, having to do with theme parks. She just did that film Disneyland Handcrafted, which is wonderful. She did the imagineering story. Yep. Um I met her briefly once and spoke to her. She was a very nice person. Um and it occurred to me when I heard that Don Iworks had passed away, yeah, that the iWorks family has been associated with the Disney company longer than the Disney family. Yes. Yes, indeed. I mean, from the absolute beginning of iWorks was there day one, before day one. Yep. And Leslie is still doing work with the with the company. Um, it's pretty pretty remarkable legacy. Great family of innovators. They they've all done stuff that has really made us happy.

Pete 5:39

Yep. Just don't ask any of them to draw Mickey Mouse for them, for you. No. That would be a big family football. Look up Drunken History and you'll find out why. That's a true story.

Kelly 5:50

When I saw Leslie Eyeworks, she confirmed that story.

Pete 5:54

Yes. It's like that's yeah.

Kelly 5:57

So uh I just wanted to get that out of the way. I thought it was worth mentioning uh Don Eyeworks, rest in peace. Yep. That all behind us. Let's go way, way far behind us. Yes, to a time that is absolutely scientifically accurate when the Wayback Machine.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Quiet, you get in the Wayback Machine.

Kelly 6:20

Cave people later named, though this was not true originally, later named Mugmen, uh, pre existed, coexisted with dinosaurs, evidently could ride motorcycles and um have cocktail parties.

Pete 6:35

Oh, yeah. Yeah play poker. Yes. Yep. Go go fishing with giant dinosaur traps and stuff. It's pretty great. So before we go into this, uh this particular attraction, I want to take a quick little deep dive as to why this particular attraction

La Brea Tar Pits To Jurassic Park

Pete 6:52

was built. Yeah. It's because of the notion of several things. One, we had the rise of the La Brea Tar pits in La Brea, California. And for those who do not know, you should look it up. It's one of my favorite places ever in the universe as a kid.

Kelly 7:08

It's really cool. I'd heard about it for years, but it wasn't until I saw it and I was like, oh, this is neat. Yeah.

Pete 7:15

They're about to refurbish the museum, sadly. Yeah. Because it's a it was a tiny little museum. What I loved is that they had this big atrium in the middle. There was all these plants that were actually historic. Yeah. I mean, I mean, ancient genus of plants. So you're in a Jurassic jungle. Right. Which is great with a little creek. So it was a nice little rest, but but for those who don't know, the La Brea tar pits is literally what it says. Where La Brea, California is literally built on top of an ocean of tar. And millions of years ago, this tar had still been flowing, had still been this big deposit, and animals large and small would accidentally like wind up in the tar because sometimes it would rain and the water would settle on top of it. And so they would drink the water, but when a predator would come by, they would panic and go into the tar trying to run away. And then they would get stuck in the tar. Yeah. And the predators would say, Oh boy, easy pickings, and then they would get stuck in the tar. And then the the carrying birds would go, oh boy, easy pickings, and they would get stuck. Yeah. And it just became a thing. And even human beings wound up stuck inside this tar. Yeah. And were fossilized.

Kelly 8:28

Little known fact, this is why the chairs at slot machines in Las Vegas are sticky. Same reason.

Pete 8:36

Some of the people that you see in Vegas are date back that far. One more round, Ma. I swear I'm gonna get in. I swear I'm gonna get more cherries. Yeah, the La Brea Tarpitz is a great place to visit, but it had been a tourist attraction since the 30s. And it was also, strangely enough, a premiere of a movie that would start a whole new genre and approach to filmmaking and also uh kill the career of the person who made it. And this was Phil Tippett, yes, uh stop motion puppeteer extraordinaire, had taken a break at industrial light and magic. Right. And he decided to do a personal project using his Go Motion technology called Prehistoric Beast. And what it was, it was like a nature film in which you would follow a triceratops through the world of the pre-histoph. And it's beautiful. It is beautiful, and it's you're following the triceratops through the prehistoric world, and you've got all the great classic tropes. You know, it's it's a herbivore, it's eating, here's the smaller Gallimimus is running around, and you've got this, you've got that. Right. And then the inevitable T-Rex fight.

unknown 9:45

Yeah.

Pete 9:45

And then another has to happen. Yeah. Right. It's about eight or nine minutes long. Yeah. And Tippett worked out a deal. He was so proud of it, he worked out a deal to show this thing at natural history museums, including the La Brea Tar Pits. Uh-huh. And there was a figure. We have mentioned him in the past, named Forrest J. Ackerman. Yes. Uncle Fory, on my 10th birthday, uh-huh. On Saturday, we went down to Los Angeles. My parents got me an audience with Uncle Forey at his place. That's so awesome. And I got to learn all the fun things about King Kong and all that from him, and that's what got me started on my geek time. The following Sunday, the next day, we went to the Labrea Tar Pits and I saw this film. I don't think I really had time to look at any of the bones or look at any of the other the mastodons and the dire wolves and the saber-toothed tigers, because they don't really have dinosaurs there. But they do have other ancient creatures there, giant sloths and Neanderthals and orations and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. But I remember sitting in this little amphitheater watching the prehistoric beasts over and over again. Because even by then, I knew that I didn't may not have known Phil Tippett's name, but I knew, ooh, this is these are the people who do Star Wars. Right. It's that style of stop motion. Yeah. Well, somebody else went and saw that. And his name was Michael Crichton. And Michael Crichton saw this and went, what would it be like to actually see dinosaurs for he's wandered around La Brea tar pits watching people pick away at amber that had been dropped into the the tar pits and looking at these bones. And he put two and two together and he came up with Jurassic Park. Yeah. And for those who may not know, Phil Tippett was originally slated to do all the dinosaur effects, but because of CGI technology exploding at the time, and a few things that are slightly controversial, it aced out of that job. So he literally inspired the movie that killed his career accidentally. There's a famous anecdote where he saw the footage of the CGI T-Rex for the first time. And I guess he went very pale and people went, You okay? He goes, I think I'm extinct. But people's interest in dinosaurs goes way back.

Victorian Dinosaurs And Central Park Legends

Pete 12:04

All the way back to the Victorian era. So I want to go even wayer back. Yeah. But this is the 18, around the 1830s, 1850s. I'm sorry. In the 1850s, Prince Albert. Mm-hmm. In a can? Prince Cons in a can. Pretty much. Certainly in a stew. Yeah. Prince Albert commissioned the building of the Crystal Palace. Eventually, the Crystal Palace was moved. Its new location had these fabulous gardens. I think it's Kensington Gardens. Okay. I will sp we'll we'll totally do a correction on it when we need to on our website. Yeah. But anyhow, he was a naturalist, this person I want to talk about. And his name was Waterhouse Hawkins. He was a naturalist and he loved to draw and sculpt animals. Yeah. And the earliest dinosaurs were that were discovered were iguanodons. Yeah. But they only had partial skeletons. Yeah. So they reconstructed, they went, oh, this bone looks like this particular bone in an iguana. So it must be a giant iguana. And that's what, and by today's standards, we have found more complete skeletons and we now know what they look like. Right. But back then they just kind of look like big, hunky, chunky iguanas. Yeah. Yeah. With a horn on its nose like a rhinoceros, because that was the thumb of an iguanodon. They just went, oh, it's a horn. So they put it on its nose, when in fact it's the tree bark stripping thumb that the dinosaurs had developed. Anyway, Waterhouse Hawkins was commissioned to build these giant concrete dinosaurs for the gardens. He did such a good job, they still exist. And you can see them today. They are still around. They have lasted for years and years and years. Yeah. But that was the beginning of the real interest in dinosaurs, was roughly around the 1850s. And because this is when they were fairly new to the public. Yeah. I mean, they weren't new, they were millions of years old, but as far as the public knew, the name Dinosaur by the time Waterhouse Hawkins had come around was only 30 years old. Right. And he eventually moved to New York City.

unknown 14:10

Okay.

Pete 14:10

Waterhouse. Yeah. And he was commissioned by none other than Boss Tweed himself for this to do a special exhibit for the Smithsonian. But because of labor disputes, Waterhouse Hawkins refused to work on the dinosaurs at one point and went off to negotiate a better deal for himself. And while he was out, Tweed said a bunch of thugs, probably gangs from the five points, they destroyed and burned down his studio, broke apart all of his dinosaurs and buried them in Central Park. Wow. So somewhere in Central Park, there are huge concrete dinosaurs looming underneath the citizenries of New York. Wow, that's so cool. How have they kept people from trying to dig them up? But probably the very strict rules about digging anything in New York, as we all know, the 17 or 20 stories worth of underground are so elaborate. Yeah. And everything is so crammed together that they don't want, hey, we don't want nobody digging down there and find a power line. You know what I'm saying? You know, so somewhere out there there are dinosaurs under Central Park. Yeah. Um, that weren't necessarily dinosaurs.

unknown 15:25

Right.

Flintstones Origins And Sponsor Chaos

Pete 15:27

And then as as time moves on, about a hundred years later, yeah, television comes around. And television becomes very, very popular, especially the birth of a new type of art form called the sitcom. Are we about to go to the moon, Alice? We're gonna go to the moon. It's either that or I'm gonna address the ball. Yeah. Hello, ball. We're talking about a TV show starring Jackie Gleason and Art Carney called The Honeymooners. Yeah. It was a live show in which a bus driver and his best friend, who is a sewage worker, live in a tenement apartment in Brooklyn. Yeah. And it's just their daily travails. And this is the beginnings of the classic format of, as one artist calls it, idiot and wife. Yeah. A tradition that lasts today with the likes of family guy. Totally. He actually is a Perry Grip actually wrote a theme song to it called Idiot and Wife. Oh, really? He goes, Idiot and wife. Idiot and wife. He's an idiot and she's his wife. So it's but this is the beginnings of that. And it's very funny. It's even today, it's very, very funny. It really is. Yeah, I've shown I've shown clips of it to my students and they're they they start laughing.

Kelly 16:41

And they did they they did something like 50 episodes total. Yep. And almost all of them until the very, very end, took place in one room. Yep. Almost all of it. Yeah.

Pete 16:55

Astonishing. Yeah, and they would hold an audience and people loved it. Yeah. People absolutely loved it. And while that's developing, two animators who left Disney during the strike. They left during the strike and they were not really happy. So they left and worked for a producer by the name of Fred Quimby.

Kelly 17:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pete 17:16

These two guys are William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Yeah. And they invented Tom and Jerry. Tom and Jerry cartoons became very popular.

Kelly 17:24

That's right. People forget that Hannah and Barbera won Oscars for Tom and Jerry. They were they were sweeping.

Pete 17:30

Yes. Every year and going up against some very big Disney shorts and they would sweep because like baby puss, the famous Mama Yokiero. Yeah. When Tom is dressed up as a baby. Yep. Really amazing stuff. Beautiful. And but the process of doing that level of animation, as we know, is very expensive.

Kelly 17:51

Yeah.

Pete 17:52

Yeah. And when you look at those early Tom and Jerry cartoons, they're beautifully full frame animation and shadow work and the airbrushed watercolor backgrounds are incredible, and the design, it's beautiful, but it's expensive. Yeah. So Hannah Barbera make a deal and they come out with a cartoon roughly about the same time that the honeymooners are going off the air. Yes. Called Rough and Ready. Yeah. And it's a full color cartoon because you have Crusader Rabbit. Yeah. You've got Tom Terrific from Harvey Tunes. You've got a lot of trendsetters, I mean, the pioneers we should say on TV. But Hannah Barbera say we can do this and we can do it for cheap. Yeah. And people will like it. Rough and Ready were instant hit with kids. Yeah. Really good character design. Yeah. Solid little stories that worked. And the animation didn't suck like Clutch Cargo. Yeah. Oi. Yeah. For those who don't know what Clutch Cargo is, it's a cartoon in which, in order to save enough money to, I don't know, turn on the lights. Yeah. Rather than animating characters speak, they would superimpose one human's lips, the same woman, over and over on everybody's face. And do you know who that was?

Kelly 19:11

Who was that? We talked about it recently. I don't know if we talked about it on the show, or just you and I talked about it. It was Margaret Carey, the model for Tinkerbell. I forgot about that. And she also just passed away about a month ago. Yeah, she actually was the lip model for Clutch Cargo.

Pete 19:32

Anyway, but but Hannah Barbera were producing really good animation. This is also when television started to realize that people were paying attention to advertisements. Yes. Especially kids. Yeah. And so sponsors started popping up everywhere. Yeah. But this came out of an accident. There was a in the realm of children's entertainment, you had cartoons, but you also had live hosts, very much like the horror hosts of late night. Yeah. You had morning show hosts. There was an entertainer, I believe, from I can't remember if he was from Chicago or Pennsylvania, but one of those, his name was Soupy Sales. Yeah. And Soupy Sales had the Soupy Sales program, and he was this guy with a bow tie and a sweater living in a clubhouse. Yeah. And he had a big dog named White White White Fang and Blacktooth or whatever. Blacktooth and White Fang. Basically, they weren't dogs, they were just these giant hairy gloves, and someone's off camera operating this hand that would come on his camera. What are you talking about? Where's your where's your bowl? Well, wasn't it over in the kitchen? And then there would be like the girl dog would come in. No kiss, no kiss. And they had Pookie the Lion, which was a little hand puppet that would come in and uh lip sync to jazz.

Kelly 21:00

Yeah. Great. Real quick, as a quick aside, do you know about Supy's two sons? No. Hunt and Tony Sales? No. They played in David Bowie's band for years and years and years. Wow. They were two of the four people in Tin Machine. Oh man. But they also played with him on other records.

Pete 21:18

Did they do the mouse? The mouse? This was Soupy Sales's big record hit. Oh, that's right. I do remember that. Yeah. Do the mouse. Yeah. Anyway. Okay. Back to Soupy. See how I steered that back, folks? So Stewie. Save me for myself. Stewie. Soup Soupy was live. And there was one point on New Year's Day that they were broadcasting. And production, the producer who's right by the camera, is like, stretch it out, stretch it out. Stretch it out. We got 60 more minutes, 60 more seconds, stretch it out. And he's trying to come up with routine. He's hung over from New Year's. Yeah. And he's up early. Because remember, this is TV that's live. And so kids are watching. So he decides to make a joke before they go to commercial. Yeah. And the joke was something along the lines of hey kids, what? I bet mom and dad are upstairs, still in bed, hung over from New Year's. What you could do? Why don't you go upstairs, sneak up and find dad's wallet or mom's purse, and pull out one of those little green pieces of paper with guys with beards on it and mail it to Soupy Sales care of this station, gives the address, and if you send it to me, I'll send you a postcard from Buenos Aires. Hey, you know, and it was a joke. It was a total hee-hee-hee tee hee he joke. But and you can hear the cameraman laughing. But that was on a Friday. Yeah. The weekend happens. He's not on the air. He comes back on the Monday, and the studio manager is waiting for him in the lobby. Get in here. What? What? And he brings him into his green room, and there's five mailbags full, full of little letters written in crayon and ballpoint pen. Oh. Little kids' handwriting and stamps filled with money. It was well into the six figures, the amount of money that was sent to Soupy. Oh. He was fired immediately. Yeah, it was problematic. However, there's a reason why he was back on the air not too long after. It's because the sponsors realized several things. One, the kids are watching. Yep. Two, the kids are stupid and will do anything someone on TV tells them to do. Yeah, particularly Soupy Sales. Yes. If you've got a good personality and you've got a good audience, you can sell them anything. Yes. Along comes Hannah Barbera looking for a way to make their show. And they've got this idea for a show about the honeymooners. They love Jackie Gleason. They almost want to hire Jackie Gleason to be in the show, but he wasn't interested. He's way too big for that. I'm Jackie Gleason. The great one, Mike. I'm the great one, you know. Hey, Mickey Daddy. Sorry, that's really obscure. Yeah. I don't know why I know that one. Anyway, so they they decide to make a TV show about the honeymooners. They went and visited the La Brea Tar Pits looking for an idea, and sure enough, the idea for the Flintstones. Flintstones. But they needed the money to make the show. So how did they do it? They got Winston cigarettes to be the sponsor. Oh boy. So in order to make it, they had to make these commercials with Fred and Barney. Yeah. They sure work hard, don't they? Yeah, I hate watching them work so hard. Yep. Let's go over here so we don't have to look at them. And Betty and Wilm are outside, like mowing the lawn and doing it. And Fred and Barney are sitting there on their butts smoking Winston Winston cigarettes. Yeah. They got that long filter dip. That's the best cigarette ever, Barney. And they're smoking. Yeah. And adults' parents, obviously, and well deservedly lost their ever-loving minds. They're like, you're selling our kids cigarettes?

Kelly 25:25

Well, except except for the Flintstones was prime time. I know. So so it was appealing to kids, but uh they knew adults were watching.

Pete 25:34

Yes. Yeah.

Kelly 25:34

Yeah. The problem is the kid hit.

Pete 25:36

Yeah, it was a big hit. The Flintstones was huge. So in order to see Winston Cigarettes is had because it's a big tobacco, it has subsidiary companies. Yeah. You know what one of the subsidiary companies of Winston cigarettes was? Making vitamins. Okay. And so in order to curb the whole thing about making cigarettes, they said, well, we'll make something wholesome for kids. So that was the birth of the Flintstone Chewable Vitamin. That's right. Still around today. Still around today. Yeah. Along with Fruity Pebbles. Yep. I don't know if General Mills is a subsidiary of that same tobacco company, but who knows? Yeah, I don't know. They're all connected these days. But anyway, the Flintstones became this massive, massive hit. And for the longest time, it was one of the longest-running animated shows, only to be unseated by the Simpsons, finally. Right. Right. And and Idiot and Wife, it becomes the backbone that almost every cartoon family show ever since has been. Yeah. Family Guy, The Simpsons, of the Jetsons, they're all related to that model. Right. Yeah. The Flintstones become so popular that people love this notion of cavemen and the popularity of this genre of cavemen and cavewomen running around bonking each other on the head and being weirdos.

Kelly 26:56

Yeah, and it's and it's explosive. Like from the Flintstones on. So the Flintstones are like 1960, I think. Like immediately a hit. Yeah. Also, you've got this kind of movement in garage rock that's all very very the, you know, the modern primitives, but they're really just doing the Flintstones as rock and roll bands. Right. Which is cool.

Pete 27:17

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you have movies like One Million BC with Raquel Welch and Ray Harryhausen, you know, Valley of Guanji. Yeah. It's this total reviv a resurgence of interest in dinosaur and cavemen. Right. And so now we cut to Santa Cruz, California.

Santa Cruz Expands And Builds Cave Train

Pete 27:36

Yes. Where people have witnessed the opening of Disneyland.

Kelly 27:41

Right. And they have realized that people are showing up and they're expecting something more than what they're getting at the boardwalk.

Pete 27:50

Yeah, because up to this point they have a carousel. This loof carousel. Yeah, still wonderful.

Kelly 27:55

Go ride it. It's so lovely.

Pete 27:57

Absolutely. And if you never get a chance to see it in person, watch The Lost Boys, the whole opening sequence where David and the other vampires are roaming around. That's the actual carousel. Yep. And it's a fabulous piece. They've got the giant dipper. They have the giant dipper, which is an amazing wooden roller coaster. Maybe my favorite roller coaster. It's way up there. It's really, really good. Yeah. They had bumper cars. They have a fabulous old-style arcade. It used to have a big swimming pool off on one side, they had a huge dance hall. So for a long time, the boardwalk was kind of the Coney Island of the West Coast.

Kelly 28:31

Yeah, they had they had the Coconut Grove spelled like the Marx Brothers Coconut. The building's still there. They don't really use it for public events much anymore. You can rent it out for um weddings. There was a lot going on there. There was saltwater baths. Part of the reason that the boardwalk formed as it did was that it is right where the Monterey Bay meets the outlet of the San Lorenzo River. Yep. And so someone came in and started started building like saltwater baths, you know, for your health. And then a whole bunch of people started doing it. And then it turned into this kind of industry, and the boardwalk kind of formed around that. Yep.

Pete 29:10

Yeah, you have food concessions and, of course, the Carnies move in, et cetera, et cetera.

Kelly 29:15

By the way, if you want to see the San Lorenzo Liver Liver, the San Lorenzo River, uh, also watched The Lost Boys. They hang off a bridge and drop into it.

Pete 29:24

Yep. Yep, it's pretty great. Also, if you want to learn more about some of the other attractions of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, listen to our playland at the beach at the throat. Yeah. We talk about where uh Laughing Sal, one of the laugh, great laughing Sal's, resides.

Kelly 29:38

Yeah.

Pete 29:38

She's still there. You can hear her cackling away over at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

Kelly 29:42

We are just unabashed fans of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. I just love it.

Pete 29:46

Yep. I grew up, my mom went to uh Santa Cruz University. And during one summer she was taking summer classes, she would drop me there every other day. Yeah. And I would I would get 20 bucks. So she was a banana slug? She was a banana slug. She was getting her treat teaching credential. Yep. She's like, here's 20 bucks, go away. Yeah.

Kelly 30:05

Okay. You know. Does that work? Because I got 20.

Pete 30:11

Viewers are digging their pockets now.

Kelly 30:14

Oh no, we have Subie sales all over again. No! Don't tell another deep dive. It's the worst. But so they, you know, the boardwalk, they decided that they were going to do a couple of things towards the late 50s, partially to compete with Disneyland and partially just to expand what they had. They were going to extend it from the edge of the giant dipper all the way just about to the San Lorenzo River. Yep. And that was going to involve building a big kind of concrete pile there and a seawall along the Monterey Bay all the way to the river. When they did this, what they ended up with was a whole bunch of underground area. And they said, well, as if if this is what we're going to do, let's build some Disneyland style rides and put it in that area. So they reached out to Aero Development, who had helped develop a whole bunch of stuff at Disneyland. Mr.

Pete 31:19

Toad's Wild Rides, Snow White, Pinocchio, a Casey Jr. train. Yeah. Yeah. Based in Mountain View, California.

Kelly 31:27

Mountain View, California, yeah. And they're still around in some form or another. But they reached out to them and said, hey, let's can we collaborate with you? They basically built well one of the two things was just a replica of the Autopia.

Pete 31:41

Although, although they're proud to say this, no, I mean I'm looking, I'm staring down the barrel of a Bob Gerb Funko pop. Yes. Right now as I say this, so sorry, Bob. But when they first did Autopia, yeah, it didn't have a rail. Yes. It didn't have a central rail. People were smashing the cars, they're smashing into each other, into the scenery, and sometimes the staff. And Aero developed these cars for Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, but that central rail. Yeah, for the Autorama, yeah. Yeah, for the Autorama, which I kind of like better than Autotopia. Yeah, me too. The Autorama was more controlled, and Walt saw that went. I have an idea.

Kelly 32:20

Yeah, Walt Walt plussed up the Autopia by taking uh the design from the Autorama. Yeah, pretty much. But fair enough. I mean the Autorama was kind of a rip-up of the Autopia.

Pete 32:30

Yeah, it's like if it is, it worked, it worked. Who cares?

Kelly 32:34

And then they realized they had all of this underground area, some of which they were going to use for storage and maintenance, but they were like, we could do some sort of dark ride in there. Yeah. So they had Arrow build them two trains, two uh uh electric trains that run all day long, they charge them at night. And and say it's going to go into this cave, and then we're gonna have some sort of adventure. And the Flintstones were huge. Yep. And it was 1960, and they decided it was going to be a prehistoric caveman-based cave train. The cave train adventure. That's right. When it opened in 1961, it was called The Cave Train to the Lost World. I love that. I love it. They they had some kind of competing designs for it at the time. One was much more serious. The cave people are being menaced and it's dark and dangerous. And then another one, which is the one that won out, was cave people are doing silly things.

Pete 33:45

Yeah. And I do want to make a note before we proceed with this. Yeah. Just remember those dates. When did it open again? 1961. When did the Ford Pavilion open up at the World's Fair? Yeah, I know. 1964. Okay. So those scenes in some parts of the Ford Pavilion featured crazy, wacky, silly cavemen. Yes. So one wonders. And dinosaurs. And dinosaurs. Yeah. So it it does make you wonder: hey, did Walt send Mark Davis up to Santa Cruz for a trip with Alice?

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Alice go out and swim in the water for a little bit. I'm gonna get on this train for a little bit. Maybe. Walton made me.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

All right, I'll go out and do that. You go ahead, Mark. So it's my Alice deal. Okay, here I go. I hate Ward Kimball. Sorry.

Kelly 34:50

So the initial ride, get on the train, you go through one of those spinning tunnel effects, kind of like they had a universal for years.

Pete 34:59

Okay, somebody please, please, if you are listening. Yeah. And you know what that sound effect is that they used for the entrance into the time vortex. It has haunted me. I've been looking for the sound effect forever. The original sound effect. Right, yeah, it's different now. It's this weird 1960s electronica, it's almost a mini moo kind of effect of a kind of a sound. Yeah, yeah. Very reminiscent of something maybe from like Forbidden Planet. Right. It was part of that Space Age Electronica early synthesizer sound effects records that you would get with a big space age rocket ship on the front of the LP. Yeah, yeah. And I've I've been searching desperately for that sound effect because I used to think that was the coolest sound ever. Right. So if you're listening, please send us a WAV file of that sound effect. I would love to actually hear that. Of what it is, yeah. And find out who did that. That would be great. I looked everywhere, couldn't find it.

Kelly 35:56

Yeah, I'd I'd be curious. And and a lot of this, I went and looked on uh the Santa Cruz site uh boardbox site, they have an official historian there, and he's written quite a bit about the cave train, but even he admits like there's not much information about the early planning sessions. Right. We don't we we know that Arrow was involved in some of the design. The archivist is named uh Ted Whiting.

Pete 36:24

Okay.

Kelly 36:25

And we we know that Arrow was involved in some of the design. Also, the company that owned the um Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk at the time and still does, Seaside Company, the Lawrence Canfield, Canfield's son, Charles Canfield was evidently involved, Tom Cutting, a couple of other people, they had some some input, but it seems very unclear as to who really designed it, if it was designed at all. I mean, it's but potentially they just kept putting stuff in. But one of the most interesting things I read reading some of Whitting's writing about it, yeah, is that, and I I reached out to him, but I never got anything back. He described how they got the cave people for the attraction. And the way he described it was Santa Cruz acquired 50 cave people, and then the people working on the ride had to bend them and break parts of them to move them into positions they wanted them to be in. So these were not these were not designed for this. No. And the earlier um belowdown 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. The cocktail party scene with Beer Miss Duchenne, that is all original cave people. That's cool. From the opening. But all the rest of them had been read were redone later. But yeah, so somehow it's like what do you do? Like, hey, you need some cave people, these ones just fell off the back of a truck. And like, what do you mean, acquired cave people?

Pete 38:56

Well, that leads us to one particular figure that has become a new subject of absolute fascination for Kelly and I. Yeah.

Ken Forcy And A Wild Career

Pete 39:06

A gentleman by the name of Ken Forcy.

Kelly 39:08

Ken Forcy. This is the meat of what I want to get into on this episode. Hell yeah. Because Ken Forcey is the most interesting person I had never heard of. Exactly. He is unbelievably fascinating. Ken Forcy, the reason that we bring him up is that after the opening of the Cave Train, Ken Forcy comes to Santa Cruz and works at the boardwalk for a while. He tries to pitch an entirely new story for the cave train, a much darker story. They don't want that. No.

Pete 39:46

And and this is something that will actually I want Nazi cave people. You've got Beer Mr. Shane going on in there. Let's make up Nazi cave people. Sorry, no, he did not want that.

Kelly 39:58

The one of the things that sort sort of typifies Ken Forcy's story is the amount of really cool ideas he had that weren't that were turned down. Which is not to say he wasn't successful. He ended up being very successful. Ken Forcy was this guy.

Pete 40:13

He worked on Sleeping Beauty. He was an in-betweener and he worked alongside his high school buddy, a designer by the name of Ron Cobb. That's right. Yeah. He designed Alien.

Kelly 40:22

Yeah. So I I did I don't know if you read about this. Did you read about his relationship to Roger Corman?

Pete 40:30

Tell me. I heard that he had attempts to work with him.

Kelly 40:33

So he he did some work and he he helped build some stuff with Corman. He pitched a whole bunch of elaborate costumes, uh, including something that looked evidently like an early C3PO. Oh wow. Yeah. Okay. And he also pitched some monster uh designs for Knight of the Blood Beast, which Corman said were too expensive at $400.

Pete 40:59

We don't want this.

Kelly 41:00

But here's the thing that blew my mind. He was briefly involved with Forrest J. Ackerman working on Ackerman's Lord of the Rings picture.

Pete 41:11

Yep. 1950s, 1958. Tolkien himself actually pitched a critique back at Ackerman over this.

Kelly 41:19

Yeah.

Pete 41:19

Yeah. Go Uncle Forey. And yeah, and Cobb was involved with the design work in that as well.

Kelly 41:25

Yeah. And so the movie obviously never got made, or we'd be talking about it. No. A little bit later. I'm not going to tell you everything about Blossey's career. Look him up. He's amazing. Yeah. Um, a little bit later, and I'll tell you why this is important in a bit. He uh forms a puppet studio with Dave Dedage, Bud Benson, Larry Jackson, and he starts trying to put together a show called The Adventures of Sir Gadzuks. Yes. And he does a pilot. Doesn't really go anywhere, it doesn't get picked up. Uh tries to do a pilot called The Flying Dutchman. Mm-hmm. Also doesn't get picked up. Yeah. So he does a couple more things. He goes into the army, he comes out of the army, he starts working both as an in-betweener and at Wedd as an imagineer. Yep. He gets gets hired on at the model shop. Yeah, he worked on Great Moments with Mr.

Pete 42:22

Lincoln.

Kelly 42:23

That's right. He worked on the Enchanted Tiki Room. The Enchanted Tiki Room, he and Leota Tombs were there pasting feathers on the birds. Oh, wow. Together for hours and hours. That's cool. He worked on It's a Small World at the in the New York World's Fair version, the 1964 World's Fair, because we always end up back there. There you go.

Pete 42:45

Even though it's not really a World's Fair.

Kelly 42:46

It's not really a World's Fair. So interesting thing about his work on that was that in the evenings, so It's a Small World was thrown together real fast.

unknown 42:57

Oh yeah.

Kelly 42:59

And so in the evenings, he would go clean the dolls and make paint repairs. Oh, okay. But as part of the maintenance cycle, they would run the doll mechanism backwards. Oh wow. And they would do this for quite some time, and the soundtrack was tie attached, was glued on to the mechanism that ran the dolls. No. Yeah, you see where where I'm going with this? Oh no. He spent hours. Oh God. After he would spend hours every night listening to It's a Small World, the song Backwards. It was said in later years that if you mentioned that song to him, he would start kind of shaking.

Pete 43:56

He he when there were enemies of the state, they were forced to Watch this.

Kelly 44:01

So he obviously we know Raleigh Crump, and there's interviews with Crump talking about Forcy. Oh, yeah.

Pete 44:07

Absolutely.

Kelly 44:08

Crump liked him very much.

Pete 44:09

Yeah, he mentions him in it's kind of a cute story.

Kelly 44:11

Yeah. And so Crump designs that beautiful clock face for the Disneyland version of Small World. Right. With tons of flitter all over it. Basically based on Mary Blair's designs, but she had left the company at that point kind of angrily. And so he was talking to her. Crump was talking to her kind of on the side. Right. But Forcy made all those mechanisms work. See, that's cool. Yeah. What a what a fascinating guy. He worked on the haunted mansion. He worked on the country bear jamboree, which was really going to come into play in his life later. Uh-huh. He he he leaves Wedd after like a decade. And we're we're past the cave train, but I'm just I'm going on a forcy rant because he's so interested.

Pete 44:56

No, I mean we have to know this, yeah. Yeah. Because this is this is really like informing what he's going to contribute to.

Kelly 45:03

Yeah, and we'll come back to his work on the boardwalk. But he so he's he's kind of going on his own for a while. He starts working on another puppet show called The Adventures of Simeon Griep, which is pretty similar to the previous puppet show, also doesn't sell it. Nice. Then after that, he goes to work with Sidden Marty Croft. Yep. So, I mean, listen to this. The guy works with Roger Corman, with Forrest Ackerman, Rolly Crump, Walt Disney, Leota Toombs, Sidden Marty Croft. Right? I mean, the dude was everywhere. He goes to work with Sid and Marty Croft. He works on Land of the Lost. Yes. With Sid and Marty Croft. He he works on doing the chroma key compositing stuff. Oh no. Which puts us smack into Pete and I were talking about this before we were recording, that opening sequence with the Marshall Will and Holly on a routine expedition.

Pete 46:01

There's a scene in which you see the raft going down the rapids, and the rapids literally look like somebody went out to the curb out in front of their house and just put some rocks there and ran a garden hose through it. Yeah. It's a little too small. Yes. It's a little too small for scale.

Kelly 46:22

But on the cheap for T very quick for TV. Yep. I loved it as a kid.

Pete 46:28

Yep. And he also created Grumpy, the hand puppet. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the the T-Rex.

Kelly 46:36

Yes. So he did effects for Far Out Space Nuts. Yep. He did miniatures for The Lost Saucer. Yep. He worked on the Sid and Marty Croft theme park in Atlanta. He built the see-through carousel figures. So they were lit from the inside and they were translucent. He built those.

Pete 46:56

Wow. Wow. He also was going to do like a haunted house attraction for the Sid Marty. Can you imagine? Yeah. Sid Marty Croft haunted house attractions. Yeah. It's like Lindsville, only good. No, actually, it's not going to be CNR. It's going to be Paul Lind. Look at Witchy Pooh in here with us.

Kelly 47:20

One of these days we'll do a whole Sid and Marty Croft theme party. That's going to be a whole other thing. Oh my God. He he builds this thing. He builds a roller coaster for a carnival that is a sort of wacky wormhead roller coaster, and that expands into these churros stands. Yes. I know I promise I'm going somewhere with this. So the churro stands, they don't call them churros, they call them whimsies. Okay. And they're churros that are covered in something. Yeah. But the thing is, is he builds this whole structure. So there's a there's like a backstory of this whimsy factory that makes these things, and there's these these puppet characters that move on their own. And he he starts to understand how to make these fully autonomous puppet characters.

Pete 48:12

There was one of those whimsy stores at the Oak Ridge Mall in San Jose, California. No way. I remember this distinctly because as a kid, you see these little elves. It looked like a mine. Like imagine the Keebler elves, but instead of being inside of a tree, they're inside of a giant mine. Yeah. And the girls behind the counter had to wear like big elf outfits. So you'd order your whimsy, and you could, and it was like a Casa de Frito, where they like they the whimsy like the kitchen was behind the animatronic. Yeah, right. So the little minecart, little guy pushing the minecart, had this little minecart with little slots in it where the churro like whimsies would stick out of. Yeah. And so they were mining for the sugar crystals and all that kind of. And you could see these little guys with little pickaxes and like one step short of singing Hi Ho. And then this door would open and out would come your whimsies. I remembered this distinctly. That's amazing. So that that was one of them. And it makes sense in San Jose's proximity also to Arrow. I'm sure Arrow had some contributions with the mechanics on it. I'm sure.

Kelly 49:17

Yeah. And so he makes these things, he's figured out that he can do sort of more elaborate things with electronics inside puppets. Yeah. And he's had the this company that's been trying to do kind of fantasy puppet stories for a while. And he he he does some costume stuff where he's designing costume things for Welcome to Pooh Corner for Disney that are on people but they move on their own. He's he's trying to put all of these things together, and his wife passes away. And he has this moment of I need to stop dancing around this idea. I need to go right at it. And so he writes the first book about Teddy Ruxpin. Ken Forcy invents Teddy Ruxpin. He figures out like how to make this thing move on its own, how to put the cassettes in it so that it can talk to you. Uh-huh. He he wor Leota Toomes helps him with some of this. They stay friends for a very long time. That's cool. Yeah, and in fact, one of the Teddy Ruxpin characters, there's one called Leoda the Wood Sprite. Oh, wow. He named it after her. Aww. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. It's really cool. Teddy Ruxman has books, it has the toy that becomes a phenomenon. Oh, yeah. And it has TV shows based around it. So the music for the TV shows is written by someone else who is in the latter part of his career who used to work for Disney. George Wilkins. Oh my gosh. The guy who was the sound of the future in Epcot and like the Disney composer of the 80s. The guy that came up through Buddy Baker. I thought you were gonna say David Bowie. No, no, no.

Pete 51:26

And and Soupy's kids. Right.

Kelly 51:30

Yeah, George Wilkins from Tin Machine. But the guy that did the Horizons soundtrack, he's like the all the music that you heard going through Epcot when the future began in the 80s. That guy goes and works with Ken Forcy. And they stay, and and and Wilkins talks Force into becoming the lyricist for these songs. They stay a team for a long time, not just through Teddy Ruxman. They work on other stuff together. Wow. It's an incredible career. Jeez Louise. And it goes like all the way up until he uh passes in 2014. He's 77.

Pete 52:17

Like, I can't. He had like 12 patents, too. That's right, yeah. Yeah. He was an inventor. I mean, this guy, like, before we did this episode, we thought, okay, we're just gonna be talking about black-lit dinosaurs and cavemen. Yeah. Then we find out about Ken Forcey, we're like, holy moly, what? Who is this guy?

Kelly 52:35

I thought Rick Bastrup was gonna be the most interesting character we ran into. And we are gonna talk about him. Yeah. But no, Ken Force is maybe the most interesting guy I've ever read about.

Classic Scenes And The Barker Caveman

Pete 52:48

So by all accounts, now that we've gotten his bio kind of run by you, he's the one who is credited for sculpting the caveman.

Kelly 52:57

Yeah, so he is the guy who after the initial thing was put in, they basically said, this thing needs some help. There's some empty spots. I mean, it was popular, people liked it, but they were like, we need to do some fun things with this. So Ken Forcy was the guy where he was like, Let me see what I can do with these. Let's make some more stuff. Let's let's really let's let's really spruce up the cave train. And so, and and it was kind of people didn't talk about it for a while. In fact, I was looking at the the archivist's blog. Yeah, he even he didn't know until he started writing about it. Oh, I don't know, 20 years ago. Yeah, even he didn't know that Forcey was involved. Started unearthing papers. It was like, oh, this guy was doing stuff here.

Pete 53:48

Oh, yeah. Makes you, I mean, with with his with the comment of yes, they acquired the cave people. Yeah, it makes you wonder, like, well, who was that really for originally? Yeah. It makes me wonder if our dinosaur friends down south were actually meant to have like a couple of cave people out there, and they're like, well, we're not gonna pay you. Right. Oh, well, what am I supposed to do with all these cavemen? But it's Santa Cruz.

Kelly 54:15

All right, here you go. Well, and there's there's a rumor, it's kind of mythology. I don't think it could possibly be true, but the rumor was that the original cavemen were all department store mannequins, but no mannequin looks like that. You you would never put clothes on those things and go, I want that. I want to look like that guy.

Pete 54:33

Well, it was the early 60s. I mean, it's they were going for avant-garde. Well, I don't know.

Kelly 54:40

But yeah, he started fabricating uh a bunch bunch of new fiberglass men that were much uh much easier to move. He knew he knew more how to do that kind of thing. But he also, at the boardwalk, he built the glass seahorses that are on top of the carousel. Yes. Yeah, like those were not there before him. No, they weren't.

Pete 55:03

They're they're fabulous pieces. Yeah. Let's talk about the fiberglass cavemen for just a minute here. Okay, yes. Okay. I will not, for the sake of the statute of limitations, mention any actual names. Yes. However, years ago in the late 80s, early 90s, if you've ever seen the movie The Lost Boys, in the opening sequence, People Are Strange. Yeah. There is a shot of the sky rafts that would traverse over the heads of people on the sand, so you could travel from one end of the boardwalk to the other without messing around with the crowds. Right. And you get a nice sea view and frees your butt off because it's actually colder up there than you think. Yes, it is. It has quite a wind chill. But there was one of the cave people put into the car. So I think there's two, actually. There are two of them. They alternate. Yeah. So they say hi to each other. So one point when I was working in college, my college age, so this is 30 years ago. Yeah. But still, I don't want to get anybody in trouble. Yes. I met uh I was working at a company and a friend of my boss comes in and for a visit. Yeah. And he's this wacky surfer guy. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, how you doing, man? Wow. You want to come over to my house? I got a couple beers. And we drove out to Santa Cruz that would take a break. Yeah. This guy would make uh surfboards.

Kelly 56:31

Yeah.

Pete 56:32

So he's so he was a sculptor. So he had all the styrofoam pellets all over the place. He had the vacuum thing. Yeah. He's got the fiberglass going out in front, making boards. Yeah. And in the back of his room, sitting on top of his refrigerator, is one of the cavemen. And I said, wait, that's one of the that's one of the cavemen from the boardwalk. He goes, Yeah, shut up. I said, what are you talking about? He goes, Yeah, I got a little drunk one night and they had parked it right at one of the skyraft landing parts. Oh, God. And I realized it was only held in by like two bolts. Yeah. And they were loose. So I thought he looked kind of cold out there. So he stole, he stole that particular, the one that's in the Lost Boys. That one. For many years sat inside of his garage. So that would have been late 80s? Yeah.

Kelly 57:28

They were about to renovate it anyway.

Pete 57:29

Yeah, they were about to renovate it anyway. And I'm sure like they're like, oh, we got a cold case out here in Santa Cruz. We've got all these drug deals and stuff that we're dealing with that we have to go get this fiberglass caveman from this son of a guy.

Kelly 57:40

I don't know. They're pretty serious about those cavemen down in Santa Cruz. It's like a big deal.

Pete 57:45

It is a big deal. So I don't even think this guy is alive anymore, to be honest. I think he has passed away. Heaven only knows what the hell happened to that caveman. Well, and at this point, they they replaced most of it. Right, but still, so for a time, so if you ever wondered, gee, I wonder whatever happened to that caveman from Lost Boys. I know where he is.

Kelly 58:05

I've seen it. Just real quick, before we walk away from Ken Forcy, there was one thing that he pitched for the boardwalk that they didn't buy, but I think might have been the coolest thing I've ever heard of. Okay. It was this thing called Journey to Mars. Huh. And Journey to Mars is a how do we describe it? So it is a multi-phase science fiction ride while the Rise of the Resistance was still in short pants. You know? It was a dark ride where you got in these chambers and they were like decontamination chambers, and then you would walk into a matter transmitter, and then you get out of the matter transmitter, like it would, it would do this some sort of effect, and you would be transported to Mars where you would get out of the thing and get on these dune buggies and ride across Mars. Okay. He actually like Forcy went as far as to actually building the Martians, which look kind of like monkeys, in in his workshop. He got really far, and you can find schematics of this stuff online. You can find his drawings of it. I kind of want to build it now. I know it looks so cool.

Pete 59:29

We'll make the Martians look like Tarz Tarkas, though. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Super tall. Yeah. Super tall, green, forearms, big buggy green eyes. I'm just saying that because I want somebody dressed up as Deja Thoris runner.

Kelly 59:42

I mean, when I say dressed up, it's a it's a costume that saves on fabric, let's just say it's hot on Mars. But yeah, so that's that's kind of the the the original cave train. Like it's yeah, but you go through the circle thing, you uh go through like there's a little more of the uh the uh uh mind train through nature's wonderland thing where you go, there's waterfalls and colored uh fountains and stuff. Oh, yeah. Cavemen doing funny things. There's um there's one caveman who's literally trying he's got a giant mouse trap, turns into dinosaur. Yeah, there's the four-winged goofus bird, and then later you see an egg where another goof is bird is being hatched out of it. I love the goofbird best. And not too long after they add the um cocktail party scene, right, where there's cavemen dancing to beer mistaching.

Pete 1:00:38

Right. A very warbly, creepy sounding version. Let's put let's be clear about this. This isn't the nice Andrew Sisters version. No. This is this is a bizarre, warbly, echoey version played by cavemen that just sounds like kind of creepy.

Kelly 1:00:56

Yeah. I I listened to this thing recently. It was called the Yiddish Radio Project. It was from MPR from about 10 years ago. It's really good. It's about super localized Yiddish radio stations in New York City. Yes.

Pete 1:01:09

Yes, I heard this.

Kelly 1:01:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they did an entire episode on B mis BMS Bistushin and just how important that song was to Yiddish communities. Wow. Really interesting.

Pete 1:01:23

Anyway, I don't know. I don't know. No, no, it's one of my one of my favorite things was the poker game. Yes, yeah, yeah. One of these, one of you is a cheater.

Kelly 1:01:35

And that was probably a Ken Forcy edition, because that was that was one of the ones that was added over the next couple of years. Yep. It was the the ballroom scene, the the caveman mousetrap thing, uh, the wedding chapel scene. Oh, yes. That was all added later.

Pete 1:01:50

The weather station with the the wind tunnel that would blow on you and that kind of thing.

Kelly 1:01:55

So that that's the oh, and we need to talk about there was a Barker caveman. Oh yes. Right? So he sat, okay. So if you go to the the boardwalk, it is kind of of a level, and you're walking and walking and walking, but when you get to the new area, it is down. So you kind of have to go down into the area where the cave train is and the auto ride used to be, but it's about two stories down. Yes, it's very far down. And they had a dinosaur that would lift its head out of the water and look at you. And there was a caveman that sat in a giant tree, and the tree was high enough that that people on the upper level coming at it could see it. And the caveman was a barker, just like the barker bird at the enchanted tiki room. Yeah. And he he was I I actually found his spiel. Um he would say, You-hoo! Yes, I'm talking to you. No, don't look over there. I'm up here in this tree. You're wondering what to do next, aren't you? Well, I suggest that you come on, hey! You boys and girls walking by, I'm talking to you too. Yes, right now, as I was saying, for unequaled excitement, laughs, and dozens of silly happenings. Step down a few stairs and climb on the cave train ride. Jog along through the mysterious underground where there's a surprise around every turn. There's a cave train leaving in just a moment. Go right down these stairs to my left for the big, exciting, authentic cave train ride. Authentic was an interesting choice.

Pete 1:03:38

Did they have Wally Bogue do it? I wish. I have no idea who recorded it. He's the most spectacular cave train you've ever been on.

Kelly 1:03:50

So so that's the original cave train.

Cave Train 2000 Rebuild And Backlash

Pete 1:03:53

Wow.

Kelly 1:03:53

In the late 90s, they realized that, you know, it's a boardwalk. There's seawater everywhere. They were going, and there had been a pretty major earthquake in the Loma Prieta. Yep. Really devastated Santa Cruz about 10 years before that.

Pete 1:04:17

1989.

Kelly 1:04:18

89, thank you. And they were like, we we have to take this stuff down and reinforce this new area. So they were gonna gut the cave train ride and replace it. And so they reached out to uh guy we've talked about before, Rick Bastrop.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:34

Yes.

Kelly 1:04:34

Of R Creative Designs. Right. We uh Rick Bast Bastrop's a great character. He uh he's this guy he like plays in surf rock bands. He uh uh often goes around dressed as a cowboy, just does, just likes it. Uh he was one his company was one of the original designers of the Jaws ride. Oh wow, Florida. Okay, uh the one that got abandoned. Yeah, he often gets blamed for that, and if you hear him talk about what happened, uh it's it's a whole different story. But but an interesting guy. He had at that point, he had built the Neptune's Kingdom area at the Beach Boardwalk.

Pete 1:05:20

Okay, which is awesome. It's an amaz for those who don't know, the Neptune's Kingdom attraction at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is a elaborate arcade entertainment center with this pirate pirate mini golf course, which is so cool. So when you get when you finally knock the ball into the hole, it activates animatronics like cannons firing. Yes.

Kelly 1:05:42

So great. Yeah, really great. So he had he had worked on that. Um he had a good relationship with the the the guys who still uh did and still run the boardwalk. And so they hired him to come in and do something new with the cave train ride. They were gonna have to gut it anyway, sure. So Bastrop came in with this idea that he had for ages, which was an undersea ride. So an entirely different thing. It was like a kind of Jules Verne sort of the train. It was still going to be a train. The trains that that Aero Development made are still the ones there today. They have not changed. And he had it was a cool idea. He had this idea that it would go down, you'd use these soft lights with like ripple effects and use blowers to kind of make seaweed undulate like it's in waves. Yeah. And then you'd go down and eventually sink into a wreck, a shipwreck that was collapsing, and then it would almost collapse and you'd escape. And there was there was kind of funny stuff with giant squids, stuff like that. Anyway, it sounded like a pretty cool idea. And my favorite thing about this was he came up with the idea, he pitched it to the Santa Cruz management. They were into it.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:04

Yeah.

Kelly 1:07:04

He had to storyboard it all out in color and then give another pitch to a kind of larger group, a sort of board and and and and people and supporters and stuff. Sure. So they rented out the ballroom, the old coconut grove. Oh man. And made it dark and just filled it with moody sea lights. Oh wow. And did the the storyboard pitch that way. Oh, dude. It sounds super neat. It does. And people were into it. They were like, let's do it until the public found out.

Pete 1:07:35

Yep. We lost. I remember unfortunately being one of the people that went, no.

Kelly 1:07:41

And the public just found said, no, we love our cave train. We love our goofy old cave train. Yeah, it's a Santa Cruz staple. It really is. So he he and his company came in and said, all right, well, yeah, I mean, we're not gonna fight that. So we will redesign the cave train. Right. So what they did was they rebuilt most of the characters. They actually had Garner Holt do the cave people. Yep. They're much less hideous.

Pete 1:08:15

When you look at the pictures of the original cave people, it's like, oh God.

Kelly 1:08:21

They they kept the limited animatronics. Yeah. They moved a little bit better, or they do move a little bit better. This is what we have now. They changed a bunch of the scenes. There's more m modern references, like there's a a caveman motorcycle cop that's trying to pull you over, and there's what is it, the the McBolder burgers over 300 sold. Right. Uh this is when they they named them the Mugmen. Right. They're trying to implicate that you're in the past but still on the boardwalk. So there's like surfer gave men. Right. Yes. It's still charming, it's still funny. One thing that that Bastrup did that I think was really smart was he changed it from just scenic lighting to black lights. Yes. So now everything kind of pops a lot more. But there's a little more of a narrative flow. I think he did a pretty good job with it, honestly. There's some neat stuff in there, absolutely. Yeah. One of the so uh well, one effect he put in that he had to get rid of right away, which was they had these water squirting things that would kind of hit people in the train.

Pete 1:09:29

Yep.

Kelly 1:09:29

Which he'd used in a bunch of different attractions before, but he'd never tried it in a blacklight attraction. And uh the in a black light attraction, there's nothing to reflect the water. Right. So people can't see it at all. Oh jeez. And people were like, is someone spitting on me? What's happening? He killed that. But my favorite thing about his version of the Cave Train, which was launched as the Cave Train 2000. Right. Uh, and then became the Cave Train Adventure, but it's basically the same. Uh for the soundtrack, he went and found old vintage records, vintage sound effects records, vintage music records, and just used those sounds because he thought it would add this eerie effect to it, and it does.

Pete 1:10:21

It does, it really does. Yeah. Like I mentioned, the the the current version of my beer Mr. Shane is just so warbling, and this sounds like really kind of crude caveman music. Yeah. It's weird. The the context actually works.

Kelly 1:10:39

And that's the one scene that they kept from the previous ride was that the ballroom uh beer miss Shane.

Pete 1:10:50

See, I'm getting it right now.

Kelly 1:10:52

And those cavemen, which the he for some reason he decided were now called mugmen, those uh figures were actually from the original cave train. All the rest of them are new, uh, but those ones they they kept original figures. That's cool. And there are still two cave people or mugmen. I again on the sky gliders going overhead. Uh-huh. Those those are original figures. Yeah, and and those like they actually have names. The two on the Skyglider, and there's two sitting on benches at the boardwalk. Yeah. Those are original figures from the original ride. Oh, wow. And they all have names and they start with C, and I can't remember what they are. The cave train, it still goes today. Yeah. They recently upgraded the the tunnel effect, so now it looks like there's lava around you.

Pete 1:11:48

Oh, that's fun.

Kelly 1:11:49

Yeah. It's like a centerpiece of the boardwalk as much as the giant dipper or the loof carousel is. So have have uh is is there more or have we hit that point?

Pete 1:12:00

I think we've hit the point now, uh-huh in which uh we ignore all considerations of budget or safety or practicality.

A Rare Ride We Should Not Fix

Pete 1:12:09

Yeah. And we talk about our plus ups. Yes. So, Kelly, since you you did all of this fabulous research, by the way, I did some research. Kelly is the one who really did a deep dive on this one.

Kelly 1:12:22

This is this is hard because part of the reason that the cave train is great is because it's goofy. Like you don't want to overdo it. Right. What do you do with the cave train? I don't know. I've been thinking about this for days, and I can't think of what to do. You could try and expand it, but I don't think you'd want to be in it that much longer.

Pete 1:12:49

No. So there's just so much of my beer, Mr. Shane, you can listen to. Yeah, I don't I don't want interactive elements at all. I I I will totally admit I'm with you. Yeah. I like I've actually reached a point where like part of its charm is its gankiness. Yeah. And it its age. Yeah. And the fact that it is such a delightful staple that you're like, no, please don't mess with it. Right. We run into this, and we ran into this fairly recently, as far as this episode is concerned, in which a lot of companies going say to themselves, we should upgrade this. And then they upgrade a particular attraction. And then the audience just says, Why did you do that? We do not like this. Yeah, we don't need it. We it wasn't required. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And I really do feel like that the cave train is one of those examples of an attraction where if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Right. You don't need to really do much to it. Now, you could do like the equivalent of when Disney shut down Fantasyland for a couple of years and did the vitalization. Trying their best to say, we're gonna keep the look of the caveman, we're not gonna make it make it look too much different, but we're just gonna spruce it up.

Kelly 1:14:08

Yeah.

Pete 1:14:09

And and and update it a little bit, but keep that charm and keep that low-tech approach. Because when you look at the earlier versions of Mr. Toad or Snow White or Peter Pan, it doesn't look the same. Right. It doesn't look terrible, but it just doesn't look the same. It just when they redid it in the 80s, it just has a a much more spruced-up look. Now, think about that for a minute. It was revitalized 40 years ago. Yeah. When they slammed the great portcullis down on Heather O'Rourke. Yeah. And they haven't touched it since. Yeah. With some exceptions. I mean, yes, they they made Snow White less scary. Right. And yes, they have thankfully upgraded Tiger Lily doing a ceremonial dance as opposed to, oh, big redskin chief racism depiction of Native Americans. However, minor changes aside, they haven't really done much. Yeah. Especially to Pinocchio or Mr. Toad. Yeah. Mr. Toad is still plywood.

Kelly 1:15:12

Yeah, and it's astonishingly popular. Yes. I mean, there's always a line. Oh, always.

Pete 1:15:18

If you upgraded, think about upgrading Mr. Toad now. If if you added some sort of projection mapping effect or some other type of modern convenience or have it, we have a fully autonomous Mr. Toad walking around now. Yeah. People would lose their minds and not in a good way. Yeah. They would re- because to them, there's something delightful in the old-fashionedness of that. And the same, I think, is true of the cave train. So I think we may have actually run into our first episode of which we are unable to actually plus this one up. So here's apart from a fresh coat of paint.

Kelly 1:15:55

Here's the thing you could do. Leave the ride alone mostly. Yeah, a fresh coat of paint's always good. Work with some sound a little. Sure. Do what you need to do. You could improve the area. Yes. So so the surrounding area, yes. Almost entirely just kitty rides. And by kitty rides, I mean like three to five-year-old kitty rides. Really bad ones.

Pete 1:16:20

Like the little car rides that go. Yeah. Get rid of those or gut 'em. Yeah. And reskin them so they're still kitty rides, but they fit in the world of the mugmen. Right. That would be cool. Yeah. It becomes the prehistoric sunken gardens.

Kelly 1:16:38

Right. And then then you, it's like, oh, these are things people have brought back from the mugmen world on their adventure. See, there's our plus up.

Pete 1:16:46

That would be there. We go. Yeah. So yeah, it just revitalize the outer area so that when you feel like you're in this wonder because it's underground. Yes. And it's in this sunken area. It's like, yes, the Loma Prieta earthquake went up, and we found some artifacts of the Mugman. We should here's the Mugman rolly coaster. Here's the Mugman this. Right. And yeah, have it expand outward just a little bit more. Yeah. That would be fun. I think, I think, I think that would work. I'm glad we had this little talk. So so Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, if you're listening, I do actually know some people, some imagineers and some designers, who are looking for work right now and would be happy to help you redesign this area.

Kelly 1:17:28

So give us a call. Yeah. I'm sure they are pretty good at faux brickwork. Oh, yes. Faux rock work.

Pete 1:17:36

Yeah. Well, I mean, interesting. Here's a quick little note. That's where it all started with Arrow. No. So the Arrow does the Arrow company that makes the the ride works, the trains, their very first endeavor, because they bought the land where their warehouse would be first. Yeah. They didn't have enough, so but they didn't have money to have a building. Yeah. So they bought the land. Uh-huh. So they they found out, because this is right after World War II, and everybody's trying to look for a break. So what happened was they ran into this guy who wanted to make a company that made cinder blocks for all of the building that was about to happen in Southern California and Terrytown and all over the Bay Area. And say, I'm going to supply cinder blocks and bricks. Right. But cinder blocks require a mold. So these guys, the original founders of Arrow, their first gig was making an efficient and better way of molding cinder blocks that would be utilized all the way up and down California.

Kelly 1:18:41

Huh.

Pete 1:18:42

And they did that in the open air with like a tar a tent over there where they're working. They made the molds. They did the work for free for this guy in exchange for cinder blocks to build their warehouse to found their company. Oh, huh. So it was literally labor for labor trade. That's awesome. Isn't that cool? Yeah. And that's and that's where it all started. Yeah. So it started with rocks and it ends with rocks.

Kelly 1:19:09

Remind me at some point we'll have to have a conversation about graphene. Because graphene is the future of theme parks.

Pete 1:19:15

Well, hopefully that's a Tomorrowland episode that we'll have yet to plan. Well, uh if you ever feel nostalgic, travel to Santa Cruz and go aboard the cave train.

Kelly 1:19:26

It is well worth an excursion. Yeah, it sure is. If you want to see what California was like in the mid-century, there's still a bunch of it there. Oh, yes, indeed. Some of the same people, too.

Pete 1:19:38

Yeah. All right. All right, folks. Well, thank you very much for joining us. I'm Peter Overstreet. And I'm Kelly McCubbin. And you've been listening to The Lowdown on the Plus Up.

Listener Outreach And Sign Off

Kelly 1:20:02

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