This week's episode of The Wild Card Cat is brought to you by... No, no, no, no, no, no... What are you doing, Ron? This is the 200th commercial.
You pleeds don't get to ruin this for me. I mean, I don't think I was ruining anything. I was just starting the commercial. My commercial.
I do the commercial. I think we all do the commercials. I mean, I am the one who does this. It's true.
He is the one who does that. No! The commercials are mine. Everyone knows that.
Everyone knows that. Everyone knows that. Listen, Linda. Linda?
You two just sit there. I've got this one. Now, just wait a second. No.
No, let's see where this goes. You do realize that? Literally. Every time you say that, Ron does something insane that we definitely should have stopped him from doing.
I'm on the rest of this week's episode of The Wild Card Podcast is brought to you by the 200 commercials of The Wild Card Podcast. For 200 episodes now, we have been bringing you the sort of quality entertainment that has given all the several dozen of you out there, a solid shortle. Perhaps a titter. A teh-hee.
A chuckle. A snicker. A smirk at the very least. Even as my cohorts here have brought their lesser talents to explosively mediocre topics such as Jeff, teaching about when John Lennon killed Ringo Starr.
And when Jerry talk about, and whatever the fuck, I don't know, Skywriting or Kim Trail or something, does all of you know, I, your friend, and lover in the night time. Ron Blair have been here to bail these episodes out of the Flaming Dumpster Dive that the King of Club sandwiches and the Jack off of Farts. That's not even... It's the commercials.
Those are what keep you all tuned in. That's why you come back. You get a little taste available, Mr. Potato Heads, bombs in the podcast, Fernando, podcast takeovers, murdering Drake, burning witches at the Steak Zombie popcorn fear, and murdering Drake.
You get a taste, and you've got to come back for more. Another more soul of my humor. Another nibble on the old crusty bones, and I can promise you that you will consistently get my writing. The kind of humor you can only get from the Ron Brand.
And occasionally the other guys when they write the commercials, they're like this one. But anyway, little shitmunks, as I smirk ever so slightly as a display of friendship, I want you to know that I love me. And you aren't so bad either. So let's commercial up a show, or shit, I don't know.
What were we talking about? What in the actual fuck? What? What was that?
What was what was what? That speech? If you can call it that. I have no idea what you're talking about.
You don't recall that in Ate Speech. You just gave where you said that Jared and I were lesser talents, and you butchered both our best episode topics as well as our wild cards. It's like you don't even care about either of us at all. You seriously don't pay attention to a thing we say.
I thought you were my friend. Jeff, you were one of my closest friends. I love the commercials we do each and every week. Not only because I enjoy writing, but mostly because I get to share them with my friends.
I love coming up with challenging characters and lines for you to deliver. I revel in seeing how the two of you tackle the scenes and the dynamics in each new commercial. My writing would be nothing if I didn't know I could rely on you to bring it to life. But I can rely on you.
You two never cease to amaze me. Wow. Ron, that's very sweet of you to say. Thank you.
You're my friend. Okay, let's start the show. Hold on. Did you call me Jerry?
Welcome to the wild card podcast. I'm your host, Jerry Eaton, and my co-pilates on this Journey to Wherever are my good friends, Jeff Curtis. Hello. And after analyzing the names of Ron Blair Bracket, we decided the winner of Best Name is something that if I announced it would get me punched in the duodenum, so I'll just say it's Ron Blair.
Would it be me that punched you in the duodenum? Oh, I can reach it. You can't reach your duodenum yet. I can get there.
I've got like a three foot reach. Yeah, but if I, there is a name that if I said it would make you very upset. Oh, that's true. No, that's all.
And if you know that name, you get the joke. Yeah, then we're moving on anyway. If you don't just fucking leave it alone. And if you do, fucking leave it alone.
I didn't say it. I appreciate it. But you're free to think it at home or say it out loud to your loved ones as long as Ron can't hear you. No, no, that's not true.
No, not even when you're alone. When you're not even when I'm not there. Should they be saying that? Ridiculous.
You can't control what they're thinking. I didn't say I had to control it. I just said they shouldn't. How would you know?
I know. You were actually incorrect, Jeff. Ron can control what they're thinking. You know why?
Because he's the one who tells him what the spot gets. Oh, that is true. Yeah, so therefore they think what we need them to think. I'd like to know what this podcast is all about.
We've done 200 episodes and I have yet to figure out what the hell this podcast is all about Ron. This might help you. The Wildcat podcast is about public service announcements with fun characters for kids like McGruff, the crime dog, or Louis the Lightning Bug, or Waking Nightmare, the piranha who told children if they wet the bed, he would eat them in the bathtub, or Primus the squirrel, who reminded kids to turn off the pilot light, but keep the gas running. Oh, it'll be a kid again.
Primus the squirrel. I remember him. He was like, turn off the gas and let it run. Turn off the pilot light.
Turn on a fan. Yeah, that is what our podcast is all about. I love off carbon monoxide. So I went to the Cracker Barrel this week, the first time in a year and a half, because we were hungry after we went to school opening or was there no was there nowhere else to eat in a square mile area?
Well, we've never played cells. We were strongly in this area. We're like the show needs really Tuesday. Here's why I bring up this topic.
Bring up this topic. But we didn't, I don't need it. Arby's very often. But we've eaten at all the other places.
And you know, so we went to Cracker Barrel and this is why I bring it up. I ordered the chase their menu a little bit. I'm not saying it's a better place. It's terrible, but bearable.
As I've always said. I agree with bearable. So I ordered this dinner that said ham. It was like a honey coated hammer.
How are you? Well, it was like sweet ham. Sweet ham. It was sugar baked ham or sugar ham.
And it came with three sides. So I ordered it. And when they brought it out to me, when I ordered ham, I thought there'd be like a slice of ham. There was a whole plate of ham.
The ham was as big as my entire plate. It was the only thing on it. It was like, it could feed five homeless people that piece of ham. And then three sides.
And so I just thought I'd bring it up since I know that you like ham. I still have ham upstairs in my refrigerator that I brought home because I could not eat that amount of ham. It was tasty ham. But I'm not who would want two and a half pounds of ham for dinner.
I guess. I'll take it. I'll take that ham. I love some ham.
Oh, I love some ham. Oh, well, maybe you should take a journey out to the cracker barrel and order their ham dinner. Or I could go to Denny's and order their ham dinner. Or just go to one.
Are you going to get a whole plate size? I mean, when I hold up my hands, I show you this. That's literally how big that fucking piece of ham was. Yeah, I don't want to go to cracker barrel.
I don't like those people. I don't like those people. No. So you're saying they're still terrible, but I'm terrible.
I have to disagree vehemently with bearable. Hey, Deckheads. This is normally the first podcast. We go to the favorites question.
The favorite question has retired. We have you buys it, travels in the sunset. And we made it kneel in the backyard and put bullet in its head. I was trying to make it sound like it was nice.
They went and lit on the pastures. But yeah, we told them to keep dreaming about the pastures and the rabbits. I can see it in my head. Right now.
As that bullet exploded inside its brain. Just keep looking. So which is why we're kind of just milling about. But you know we're not going to do that now because we're going straight into it.
Straight into it. Alright. The first episode that wasn't on the bracket. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. I mean, that's not the only. The first one that didn't qualify for the bracket. This first run is owed.
Couldn't be on the bracket. It's kind of an honor for me to take episode 201. So it's the winner of the new bracket. It stands alone as the best run is owed of the 200s.
Why don't you wait until you've heard it? If the only contender was sold by so far. There are no other contender. So it was the best run is owed of the 200s.
Yeah. Maybe. Maybe we'll see. You made us qualify.
Are you saying that perhaps the deckheads should tune out now? No. No. It's all to the challenge.
I'm certainly going to qualify it. If they were an ultimate challenge, I would have walked in with like Warren's Blowing. No. We would have known.
Well, I mean, just now I would have walked in with Warren's Blowing. I'd be like, because what is the name? He actually spends a lot of time on his ultimate challenges and he hasn't had that kind of time. That's why this is not an ultimate challenge because I didn't have time.
You're going to make sure Ron never has time again in his life. Done. I was about to say done and done for the most part. Well, let's talk a little bit about here in a few weeks is the really what I'm going to say is the most important event of the year.
And every year in two weeks and five days, it's player cation time. No. As you come on, it's the most important of all time. There are people in town.
Yeah. What? No. What?
To everybody. It's a celebrated week because I'm gone because I'm not here. And I can't cause any more damage while I'm gone. I don't know that's true.
People can't know. It's not very talented, but a lot of people celebrate because I'm gone and they're like, at least we won't see him in corporeal form. Astrophotection form. Maybe.
Absolutely. Possibly. So, you know, here's the plan. We're going to head down.
We're going to head down to Coco Beach first. So you can get some more shoes. We're going to sell Mark Otto's market. We're going to go to the business.
Damn it. I have said it. I've said it outside the podcast before, but if we get down there and Omir Kottos is close, I'm going to punch a fucking moose in the nose. No, you're family vacation.
No, you're not going to get a moose in Florida. I'm not punching an alley. That's just foolishness. Let's just let's just hope that Omir Kottos is open.
Then we won't have to cross that bridge because of I hope not because, you know, at the Welcome Center, I don't know if I've said this on the podcast or not. It's fucking Tropicana. They're like fresh squeezed orange juice and they have the bubbler machines up there and you go, ooh, we're finally in Florida after, you know, 13 and a half driving hours through Georgia because Georgia never ends. It takes for fucking ever to get through it.
And you get down there just for the orange juice in the Welcome Center. They're like, fresh squeezed and you're like, yeah, you're Florida and it's fucking Tropicana is where it got it is. It's terrible. But at Omir Kottos, you can get good juice.
This podcast, my friends is not at all about orange juice or Omir Kottos. Exactly. Well, let me ask you this before we move on to what this podcast is actually about. I have a guess.
You're done. How much are you going to take a cooler with you so you can buy as much of the Omir Kottos as you can carry? So that you don't have to ask everyone of your friends who might wander into Florida to go to Coco Beach and bring you back orange juice in the future? Oh, no, I'm still going to ask my friends.
The orange juice that I'm buying, I'm buying a half gallon for everybody on the trip. So, you know, I'm buying like a dozen gallons or whatever. And that is going to last us until we're done with Disney World. It'll last like three days.
Yeah. And that juice is going to be gone. And then when I get back home, I'm going to go, oh, how I would love some Omir Kottos juice again. And then every time somebody goes down to that area, I'm going to be like, hey, why don't you bring me back some juice?
Oh, it's going to be worse than that, Ron. Because how long has been since you've had it? Three years. Right.
And so then it'll be fresh in your mind again. That's what I'm thinking. The craving is going to be worse. Oh, God, I can't wait for it.
Anyway, so is the topic. Is it Disney? Maybe. It might have something to do with Disney and a dream that the man had.
See, in 1955, he opened Disneyland. I'm not going to go into Disneyland because I don't go there. And I recently looked at what's available out there. And it looks really cool.
But then it's not a resort like Disney World is. It's not as big as Magic Kingdom or all of the Disney properties in Florida because they didn't have the space to build. Right. They're not even it was all city.
It's city all around that. And I'd love to go to Magic Adventure, California's Magic Adventure or whatever. And Disney World, but the hotels around there not like a Disney World resort. The lowest, the cheapest price is $300 per night for hotel room.
And that's a little a little more steep than what I can handle. But with flights being cheaper than ever nowadays, you know, I thought I'd love to try Disneyland one day. Disneyland to California's Magic Adventure. It's just I don't trust the hotels in Anaheim for the transportation.
I'm not right there. Well, I don't think you would have a better or different experience than you would in Florida. They don't it's not as big. They don't have as much stuff.
Right. I think you it's easier for you to get to Florida. I think I don't think you're losing anything by not having gone to Disneyland. I've been to Disneyland.
I've been to Disney and Florida and Disney and you know Magic Kingdom is bigger than Disneyland. I think better too. It's just that I haven't been there. I've never been to California.
I'd like to go and breathe the air once. Well, if you're going to go to California anyway, then there's no reason not to go to Disneyland. But I wouldn't make that the only reason that you're going there if you can because there's other Disney's closer. Well, we'll see what happens because you know, I'm like live a little bit of a wild hair up my ass as it's want to happen.
I don't know they live there. So anyway, well, that's why you're supposed to shave. I'm not. It's just fucking ridiculous.
So here's the thing. None of this is written down either. But Disney it all started in the 30s and 40s when he took his daughter daughters to these little kitty parks. Yeah.
And at the kitty parks, he was sitting there. He was watching his kids and he was like, I kind of like to join in the fun. That'd be great. And that's what gave him the idea of building a family park where the entire family can enjoy attractions altogether rather than just parents going to watch the kids play.
Well, it was also having it all in one place as opposed to driving all over because I was recently in Disney and we actually watched the Disney movie where he explained all this stuff. And part of it was that on Saturdays, or we can see what take his daughters out as you were saying, different places. And he thought about, well, what if we could have all of these in one place? And so the kids and the parents could participate, but they wouldn't have to drive here and then drive five miles south there and then all over the place.
And what I'm not going to do today is talk about Disney the guy, the man. We talked about him a bit in our first episode. I have, I don't know exactly like the general people. Well, that's the thing.
You hear stories from one side who's like Disney was shady and then another people. And then no matter how good the guy is, like no matter the good things he's done, I always keep thinking, well, he was all behind that black list of communists back in the day. He was giving up names left and right. He didn't like the unions with his cartoonist.
They weren't making any money. He was making more money than God. He's so refused to pay him. That's why you saw live action films for a long time.
So like Walt Disney is not an unimpeachable guy, but overall, I think he did some good things. And he did seem altruistic somewhat in his life. So I'll give him that. But anyway, he's not the topic.
We're going to talk about Disney World and how it all came to be what's there now. You were there like two weeks ago. I think Jeff two, three weeks ago. So it's fresh in your mind.
What's there? I went there in eighth grade. So it's like, and so it's fresh in your mind. The memories are there.
I'm sure the same exact rides are still operating. I know that isn't true of universities. I've seen that. Man, I like universal.
I miss. First of all, speaking universal, who has the job to decide what intellectual properties they're going to make rides and stunt shows out of? Gary. Well, Gary needs a new job somewhere else because.
You know, it's done by committee. You know, somebody said somebody sitting at some cubicle says, why don't we make a ride out of this? And his supervisors, okay, draw me up some ideas. And then they come in with 20 different ideas and they all vote on it.
They'll be easier to build this. It'd be we got the we could be easier to do this property than this property. And it's all these things that play into it that have nothing to do with what your issue with the rides are. No, I bet it.
I bet it does. It starts with intellectual property. So whether it's one person or 20 people fast in the furious, they could have had any IP in the world. They could have done anything they wanted.
They have more money than any organization. And they chose fast in the furious. But there are eight fast and furious movies, which means that there is the base of people who love fast and furious. Now we aren't them.
There's 12 Friday the 13th movies. Where's the fucking Jason ride? Okay, that happens to me more nights. Yeah.
Anyway, I reject your logic and and whether it's a committee or just one person, they can go fuck themselves. In 1959, Walt Disney Productions began looking for land to house a second resort to supplement Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which in opened in 1955. Why would they do this? Because market surveys at the time revealed that only 5% of Disneyland's visitors came from east of the Mississippi River where 75% of the city was in the city.
Where 75% of the population of the United States lived. Additionally, Walt Disney disliked the businesses that had sprung up around Disneyland and wanted more control over a larger area of land in the next project. Of course, land in Los Angeles. If you don't buy several thousand acres, you're not going to be able to isolate your property.
So he builds the property hotels, fast food restaurants, all that builds up around it. There's nowhere to expand really. Right. He'd used up all the land that he could get in Disneyland.
And it's like 500 acres compared to the 31,000 that Disney World sits on. Well, I think in Florida, according to the film, I saw they bought like 84,000 acres in a really good, useful land on this though, because fantastic land that's great to build on. That's part of the fun story. If you can say a Walt Disney for anything, his business acumen is not one of those things.
Like he was sharp. He was amazing as a business person. You know, how do we organize, right? I do.
I do. They're not another one of the houses. Wait, was it? Hold on.
I saw this morning. It's the, oh, it was a remake of something. It's a house on Honegip Hill House. Honegip Hill House.
Yeah, I always do that. Yeah, it's based on the TV show from the look of it. So that's cool. They're fine.
I haven't seen it. Well, the text is just also there in Braddock, Frankenstein. Yeah, those are great juice. That would be interesting.
Beetlejuice should be fun. Yeah. They've had a long relationship with old Beetlejuice. So Walt Disney flew over a potential site in Orlando, Florida.
And when I guess when the source material says that they mean he flew over a bunch of swamps and land that had no value whatsoever. Boy, his arms tired. He was he was exhausted. Right.
Well, it's close to Orlando where you know, there's an airport, but there's the land's not being used because, you know, it has to be developed and there's a lot of it. So, yes, well, it wasn't even an airport. Then it was McCoy Air Force Base. Yeah.
So there was a landing strip. It did later become Orlando International Airport. But at the time what he noticed, and this was in November 1963, what he noticed was that the roads in that area were very well developed with infrastructure. Yeah, it was, yeah, there was a lot of that going on.
Who would have guessed in the early 60s, what after I said, Kennedy? Yeah, anyway, we won't get into that. Anyway, yes, and because Florida had a similar climate to California outside of it, it rained every day all the time, just not all day, like five minutes a day, 20 minutes a day. Anyway, he was looking at Interstate 4 and Florida's Turnpike with McCoy Air Force Base in the east.
And he looked at this spot and he went, this is this is correct for the new, you know, for me to fix where we went wrong with Disneyland. And so the, he chose a centrally located site near Bay Lake in the Buena Vista area. What is now the late Buena Vista area of Orlando? And the development was referred to in house as the Florida project.
Now, to avoid a burst of land speculation, Walt Disney Productions used various dummy corporations to acquire 30,500 acres of land. In, in May 1965, some of these major land transactions were recorded a few miles southwest of Orlando and Oskia County. In addition, two large tracks, stolen $1.5 million were sold and smaller tracks of flatlands and cattle pastures were purchased by exotically named companies such as the I4 Corporation, Latin American Development and Management Corporation, and the Reedy Creek Ranch Corporation. Some of the names of these fake corporations are now memorialized on a window above Main Street, USA and the Magic Kingdom.
The smaller parcels of land acquired were called outs, I don't know what that means. They were five acre lots plotted in 1912 by the Munger Land Company and sold to investors. Now, most of the owners by the 1960s were happy to get rid of that land, which was mostly swamped at the time. And I guess the article doesn't really go into this, but the reason he did a lot of fake names, because if anybody got a hold of the idea that Walt Disney was looking at land out there, the prices are going to skyrocket.
Because people buy land and they say, oh, Disney wants this guy with money. Yeah, so yeah. And they go, we can jack out the price. We've always got it.
So that was really smart on his part. However, another issue that they were running into with that particular area was that the mineral rights to the land were owned by Tufts University. And without the transfer, these rights Tufts could come in anytime and demand the removal of buildings to obtain materials. So eventually Disney's team negotiated a deal with Tufts and by the mineral rights for $15,000.
Kind of got off on a song there. So working secretly, working strictly in secrecy, real estate agents on where their clients' identity began making offers to landowners in April 1964 in parts of Southwest Orange and Northwest Osceola counties. The agents were careful not to reveal the extent of their intentions, and they were able to negotiate numerous land contracts with some landowners, including large tracts of lands for as little as $100 an acre. With the understanding that the recording of these first deeds would trigger intense public scrutiny, Disney delayed the filing of paperwork until a large portion of the land was under contract.
It was very smart. Like I said, business-wise, he was brilliant. Snagging it up for $100 an acre. And making sure no one had time to get mad about it before he was done.
Yeah, it was absolutely brilliant the way he played this. Early rumors and speculation about the land purchases assumed possible development by NASA in support of the nearby Kennedy Space Center, which is an hour away from Orlando, as well as references to other famous investors such as Ford, the Rockefeller's, and Howard Hughes. An Orlando Sentinel News article published weeks later on May 20, 1965 acknowledged a popular rumor that Disney was building an East Coast version of Disneyland. However, the publication denied its accuracy based on an earlier interview with Disney at Kennedy Space Center, in which he claimed a $50 million investment was in the works for Disneyland, and that he had no interest in building a new park.
He's a liar. In October 1965, editor Emily Bezvar from the Sentinel visited Disneyland during the park's 10th anniversary celebration. In an interview with Disney, she asked him if he was behind recent land purchases in Central Florida. Bevvar later described that Disney looked like a thrown a bucket of water in his face before denying the story.
His reaction, combined with other research obtained during her Anaheim visit, led Bevvar to author a story on October 21, 1965, where she predicted that Disney was building a second theme park in Florida. Three days later, after gathering more information from various sources, the Sentinel published another article headlined, We Say Mystery Industry is Disney. So while Disney had originally planned to publicly reveal Disney World on November 15, 1965, that in light of the Sentinel story, Disney asked Florida Governor Hayden Burns to confirm the story on October 25. His announcement called The New Theme Park the Greatest Attraction in the history of Florida.
The official reveal was kept on the previously planned November 15th date, and Disney joined Burns, the Governor in Orlando for the event. In that exciting break-and-land. That's from the Book of Mormon, but I could not continue with the lyrics, I apologize. I love you Orlando.
Keep going. I'm going to buy some time though while you get a drink of your drink here by just talking and filling the gaps that I'm listening to. With words. You guys did so good.
Well, you guys are great. Thanks for backing me up here. Walt Disney died from Circulatory Collapse caused by lung cancer on December 15th, 1966, before his vision was realized. His brother and business partner, Roy O'Disney, postponed his retirement to oversee construction of the resource for his phase.
Was that in the movie? Well, not about Roy Disney's involvement. Yeah, Roy was a big part of the whole Disney, even back when they were just making movies. So Roy was an integral partner.
I don't think Walt would have been successful without Roy's involvement. I agree. Even when he was the big brother. They were partners.
The movie did say that Walt died before his dream was fulfilled in Orlando and stuff like that. But if memory served, Roy died before that was fulfilled too. Probably because they built it right after they opened Disney World, Roy died. How many years did they spend building it?
Roy, Motherfucking Disney. They're different. Kind of. It wasn't love this thing.
No, it's sad. But anyway, on February 2nd, 1967, Roy O'Disney held a press conference at the Park Theatre's in Winter Park, Florida. The role of Epcot was emphasized in the film that was played. And I don't want to leave this out.
Part of why Disney was able to finagle so much from the government in Florida at the time. Because he was selling Epcot, the prototype world of tomorrow, you would call it. And I cannot remember what Epcot stands for, but it's something similar. And that was a big deal at the time.
That was like Disney's dream, this European community city, which is far different from what Epcot ended up, I think. Yeah. It still had the same sort of goals in mind. As far as fulfilling this goal of world communities living in peace.
Yeah, that was one of their, I mean, that was one of their goals or one of the things they were trying to show how it could do. They had models of buildings and communities that they were planning to build that. We got to see. Epcot.
Community. Is it Earth? Is the first one? Is not Earth, Eagle, Eye?
Experimental. Pro-titop community of tomorrow. Yeah. And so there are models that they build of what this community would look like.
They never, I don't think they ever built any of them. No, not like what they're about. Except for the Epcot, you know, the giant globe. There's a name for it though.
It's like, the, not Spaceship Earth. Is that the name? I don't know. Anyway, because Epcot, the theme park is not really about tomorrow.
It's about like going around the different countries and eating your way around the world. You were right about Spaceship Earth. There was a Spaceship Earth. Okay.
And they wanted to focus on technology and the future and science and all this stuff. Yeah, I didn't do that. But mostly it's about going and eating food from every country you can imagine out there. Yeah.
I think there's like seven or nine. There's like a Sweden and a brand and a France. And I think it's a little bit of Mexico and Canada. Canada, which I really do want to try the poutine from there.
I've never been to Epcot and I just want the fries and gravy. I like Epcot because it's not as crowded and there's fewer rides and it's less crazy. And you know, I can go get a baguette and or a croissant. You can get a baguette and some sushi is what you can get a schnitzel and some poutine, which is very exciting.
So Epcot was a good idea. I've never been there. I'd like to go. I think you'd enjoy it.
I think I would too. That animal kingdom or still on my butt. I've been to animal kingdom. I would like to do it.
I want to do that very badly. First time doing how much to do. You got to do Tower of Terror? Oh, fucking AIM.
Yeah. Because in Tower of Terror, you don't see the parking lot. You know, you don't see the distance between you and the pavement below. I don't like that about the elevators.
The drop doesn't get me. I can drop all day. It's going up. That rollercoaster.
Both of them. I hate going up on a roller coaster. I hate lift hills. I'll take one that shoots me out and then the ride's going.
I don't like that anticipation. Yeah. I hate the drop. I don't like the anticipation going up.
But I hate the drop. I love the drop so much as I'm alone. I've done the Tower of Terror a few years ago and it was terrifying. I did like three times.
This time I wouldn't go. I wouldn't do it again. I love it. I love it.
I want to do the Aerosmith roller coaster too. It's the only roller coaster that I think that inverts on Disney property. It's the only one so far until Tron is open. But I don't think Tron is going to invert either.
I think it's just the Aerosmith roller coaster. Anyway, you went to Hollywood Studios in the previous video. We spent a day at Hollywood and we spent a day at a Magic Kingdom and we spent a day at Blizzard Beach. How was it?
It was the best part of the trip. It was the best part of the trip. They had shade. Plus you're in water the whole time.
The fewer crowds, it's a smaller thing. So there weren't as many. There weren't as many people that can go in. It was the best part because it was shady.
It was wet. The lines weren't long. I mean, to get up to the top of some of these waterslides, you have to do a lot of climbing, which is discouraging to a lot of people because it's hard. Oh yeah.
No, that's very huge. Very tall. So once you got up there, the lines weren't that long or that bad because it's just a lot of effort. That's a good vacation.
We're not doing Blizzard Beach. We're just doing the other two. But the same ones that you did. I'm very excited.
After the film that Disney showed, it was explained that Disney World, including Epcot, for Disney World, including Epcot to Succeed, a special district would have to be formed. The really Creek Improvement District with two cities inside of it, Bay Lake and Rede Creek. Now all of that is Lake Point of Vista, those two. In addition to the standard powers of an incorporated city, which include the issuance of tax-free bonds, the district would have immunity from any current or future county or state land use laws.
The only areas where the district had to submit to the county and state would be property taxes and elevator inspections. Wow. Yeah, it's its own city. Disney built its own city, independent of the government of Florida there.
Kind of. There's no full way to get around it. The legislation forming the district and the two cities was signed into law by Florida Governor Claude R. Kirk Jr.
on May 12, 1967. The Supreme Court of Florida then ruled in 1968 that the district was allowed to issue tax-exempt bonds for public interest within the district despite the sole beneficiary being Walt Disney Productions. Can you imagine owning those bonds in the 60s and then what they'd be worth now? So Disney could create bonds that then Disney buys and Disney's the only...
Yeah, the Supreme Court said they could do it. So they did it. It's smart. It's like Money Shenanigans.
You know, Walt was pretty smart. As far as that goes. Well, he'll never come back to buy us in the budget. Disney's never going to become like a trust or anything like that.
I'm sure. I'm sure it never will. The district soon began construction of drainage canals and Disney built the first roads and the Magic Kingdom. And it's not on any of my research here, but I will say that the Magic Kingdom is built on a 14-foot platform with utilities below it.
So when you're at the Magic Kingdom, everything you're standing on is built on a platform, none of its levels. Well, I didn't know that, but I didn't know that there were tunnels all over the place in Disney because my sister-in-law, she used to be a person who planned corporate events and they often went to Disney. So she was like a Disney frequent flyer and she got to go through all these Disney secret places that nobody else even knows about. So where they run the park?
The whole park is run from underneath it. It's really fascinating. Well, that too. Kind of like Westworld.
It's a little bit like that. It's exactly like that. So anyway, the contemporary resort hotel in the Polynesian Village Resort were also completed in time for the parks opening on October 1, 1971. Those are two hotels I may never be able to afford, but they look fantastic.
They look gorgeous. Some of those Disney resort hotels, their nightly rates are ludicrous. I don't think I would pay it if I did have the money for it. I was looking and we talked about this a little bit off the air a while back.
I'm staying at a resort in Universal Studios and there was kind of like a spectrum of resorts. There were those on the lower end that were very family-oriented, bring your family, bring all your kids and I didn't really want to stay in a resort. Even though the themes look really neat, it was all about a bunch of kids running around. Yeah, they look like beautiful places, but it's like kids.
And there's the opposite of the spectrum where there's some that are incredibly gorgeous. Royal Pacifica, Port of El Bay. It's like Oasis, Mediterranean themed, but price-wise, pretty expensive. Three to $500 an hour.
Right, and then I found there like two in the middle. And I was saying one called Eventura, that's kind of modern, kind of nice. Oh, it looks kind of no frills, but it looks like a business hotel. Yeah, it does.
And it's got several bars on there. Right. But it's not the most expensive fanciers, but it's not the kids' one. So that's kind of what we decided to say.
And it gets you some nice perks. Nice perks, yeah. You made a good choice. Sapphire Falls is the one I've always wanted to go with there because they have the water taxi.
Back and forth. That's what I want is the Sapphire Falls. And it has waterfalls everywhere. It's beautiful.
They're just fun to look at. Ideally though, I honestly, ideally though, Portofino Bay or Royal Pacifica, those are the ones I dream of. I kind of had taught myself, I'm not going to need to spend as much money to sleep at night. That's what I'm saying.
It's a ludicrous amount of money that they're asking, but God damn those hotels. Yeah, well, it's not just a place to sleep. The hotels that are part of the resort, there's transportation to the actual park. Right.
Well, I think the fancier ones get you the fast pass for free. Yeah, the three deluxe resorts at Universal would give you. And the one I got doesn't give that, but it does give us an hour early access to the Harry Potter world. Yeah, you get in at eight o'clock, I think, rather than nine.
So we still get there earlier and enjoy the park for all the ones else. Yeah, we can do a bigger world. Well, the time of year you're going, it's not going to be packed. Yeah, Universal Studios is not like Disney.
You know, Disney's always business. The first way we can October is not a hellscape. Honestly, when we went three years ago, it was at the end of July. I mean, that's peak tourist season right there.
And Universal, we got to do everything we wanted to do. It was in three days. Yeah, really in a day and a half, we had done everything we needed to do. Well, when we did Universal, I guess it's three years ago now, it's right after you had done it.
We went that first week in October and we didn't have to stand in a line that lasted longer than five minutes. Wow, yeah, it's pretty great. Even the time we went. Halloween horror.
I think I can see that catching up on the side. That good. But we didn't do the Halloween horror night. We did the theme parks.
We did the Harry Potter, right. And the both parks with the Harry Potter and so on. I'm going to maybe talk about something I've actually done before, which is the Jurassic park. It's fantastic.
It's just going to make me so happy again. I've written it more than once. First of all, those boat rides are phenomenal. They're fun, no matter what the theme is.
Second of all, it's Jurassic. There's dinosaurs everywhere. The peaceful ones at first. It's lovely.
Speaking of Jurassic Park, I watched a Netflix. Oh, the movie series. The made us. They had a Jurassic Park one.
It was really cute. I watched that one this week too. I loved it. It was fascinating.
Anyway, I would recommend it. I would just park fan. Yeah, any of those movies that made us. That's a good series on Netflix.
So be sure to check that out, folks. Disney's the movies that made us. Disney's the movies that made us. Disney's Netflix is a movie that made us.
All you need is Disney Plus and all that shit is there. They've got scads of documentaries everywhere about the parks and stuff. I've been feeding my brain for the whole past week on getting so excited. Learning as much as I can about the park and Disney and the whole story behind all of that.
And then I've been watching Disney movies all this week. So I've been crying every other one because Luca and Coco, not so much Ratatouille, didn't make me cry. Coco did. I weep openly at Coco all the time.
I even re-watched Pete's Dragon yesterday. A little bit of tears. It's going to happen. I mean, these movies, fuck those guys make a little problem.
Yeah, so this is me. No, Ron, when he plans a trip, it's like an Oceans movie. Yeah, it's like the plans. And here's what we're going to do.
Here's what we tackle this. Here's the best route. I spend 11 months researching where I'm going. Even Panama City Beach, I could do a report on Panama City Beach because we were going to Mardiero and I researched the hell out of Mardiero.
I like to know where I'm going. I like to know what's around. I like to study the maps. That gives me joy.
Like a modern day urban archaeologist. That's what it is. Anyway, so they can build it up. The Palm and Magnolia golf courses, if you don't know this Magic Kingdom is fantastic for golfing.
If you're a golfer, most people don't because their goal is to just do the parks. Yeah. And who can blame them? The parks are amazing.
So they had opened a few weeks before while Fort Wilderness opened one month later. 24 days after the park opened, Roy O'Disney dedicated the property and declared that it would be known as Walt Disney World in his brother's honor. In his own words, everyone has heard of Ford cars, but have they all heard of Henry Ford? Who started it all?
I want to say yes, Roy was wrong on that scene. Walt Disney World is in memory of the man who started it all. So people will know his name as long as Walt Disney World is here. That's lovely.