Theme park history with no guardrails. Kelly McCubbin and Peter Overstreet go deep on Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, and the forgotten amusement parks that deserve to be remembered — uncovering the stories behind the attractions, the Imagineers and showmen who built them, the culture that influenced them, and what could make them even better. A Boardwalk Times Podcast.
We share a quick update on our release schedule while Pete gets his new house ready, plus a few theme park history notes we can’t resist.
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Hey everybody. So here's the thing. Uh Pete bought a house. So he's busy getting that thing ready right now so that he and his family can move in. So we've been a little off the grid a bit with the next episode, but I wanted to drop something here to let you know that we're still around, working on a new episode, uh, probably coming up in a couple of weeks. Sorry about the wait, but it'll be good. And just to kind of let you know a little bit about uh things
that are going on. First off, uh, it's the 75th anniversary of Herb Ryman drawing the original Disneyland map. It was the the weekend that Walt took him to a hotel room and got him uh hyped up on coffee and stayed there all weekend with him to get him to draw the map they used to sell the bankers on the park. So 75 years ago. Huzzah.
Coming up this weekend, I am going to be going down to Garner Holtz Place in Redland, California. There's an event by the Carol Wood Foundation that's being put on. It's called Return to Rainbow Ridge. And if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that that is right in my bailiwick. Um I am interested in Frontierland, and I am interested in the origins of Frontierland, and this is going to be about the history of the uh Rainbow Caverns Mine Train or the Mine Train through Nature's Wonderland. Uh I'm I'm really excited about going down, and I had some uh frequent flyer points so I could make a quick flight from where I am in Northern California to where they are in Southern California. Uh, a lot of cool people are gonna be there. Of course, Garner Holt, who makes all the animatronics. I mean, really, kind of all of them. Joanna Miller, Walt Disney's granddaughter, is gonna be there. Bob Gerr, of course, because this is what he does for a living now. Uh, a lot of cool people. Johnny Whittaker is gonna be there, who you may remember from Family Affair or the musical version of Tom Sawyer that the Disney Company did. Also, and I'm really excited about this, he was Johnny and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. So, um, that's my wife looked at me funny when I acted like that was cool, but it is actually cool. So they're gonna be there, a lot of other cool people. Uh, Mindy Johnson, Floyd Norman's gonna be there, you know, Disney animator. Uh, a lot a lot of neat stuff. I'm looking forward to going down and meeting some of the Order of the Red Hankerchief at Garner Holt's place this weekend. That is pretty much the stuff that's going on.
One thing I wanted to just touch on very, very briefly. A lot of news is starting to percolate up, even though this kind of happened last year, about um the America's Heartland theme park in Oklahoma and the kind of scam around it, and the uh how it was either maybe never intended to be built, or maybe it was intended to be built, but it was still older man was being built out of his money. 92-year-old Gene Bicknell was being scammed. And the story is crazy, it's it's weird, and I understand why people laugh at it. Some some unethical businessmen were pretending to be God and emailing him because, you know, God, email. And he spent his entire fortune funding this park. Tim Bignel uh was the largest Pizza Hut franchisee in the world. He was quite rich, and he is not anymore. I just want to say this. I understand that this story is funny in a lot of ways, but let's at least have some compassion for Mr. Bignel, who is a 92-year-old man who got scammed by a lot of really bad people. And, you know, I'm a left-wing guy from Northern California, and I'm sure I don't agree with Mr. Bicknall's politics, but that's sort of irrelevant here. Let's have some compassion. Uh, 92-year-old man doing what he thought was the right thing, and he just got screwed over. Let's not be too mean.
Anyway, uh, with that said, uh hope to uh hear from some of you online. You know, as we are, as always, on Blue Sky and we're on Threads and we're on Mastodon. I'd love to see more people on Mastodon because I'd rather spend more time there. Of course, we're on Facebook, though I understand that's getting a little trickier. They're gonna start charging for stuff, so I don't know. Um, anyway, uh come out and say hi. Uh, if you happen to be at the Garner Holt thing, come over and say hi, and we will talk to you real soon.
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