9 Disney Facts to Work into Conversations Immediately!

Tom Hanks and Elton John. Yeah, but isn't there like a like a decade long waiting list for it, supposedly, But come on, don't don't be a downer on this. And and and I'm gonna need to borrow twenty five thou dollars if you don't mind, but we can talk about that after the show. But you know, over the years, we've heard some pretty crazy facts like this and some of the other secrets of Disneyland and other Disney parks.

You know, things like the secret basketball accord at the top of the matter Horn Ride, or Walt Disney is hidd an apartment above the fire station in Disneyland, which actually is still there by the way, So we thought it'd be fun to share nine of our favorite facts about Disney and its parts. So let's get started. Hei their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend

man guest Ticketer. And on the other side of the soundproof glass, wearing his save Mr toad T shirt is our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I like that and I think that's my favorite shirt he's worn so far. And we've got a special guest with us in studio today. Mango right, Yeah, that's right. So we we've got the managing editor of the brilliant house staff Works dot Com, Alison Ladermook. Welcome Allison, Thanks for having me. Guys. All right,

we're gonna dive right in. So we've got nine facts that we might not have known about Disney. So let's get started. As our guests, we're gonna let you go first, Allison. What you got? I am delighted to go first. So as you're just talking about, well, there is that private apartment that Wall and Lilian used to have in Disneyland, and one really cool thing that I loved about it

kind of gave me the warm fuzzies. Was that what would be on the Disneyland premises quite a bit and he it was kind of like a small little spot, five square feet decorated. Yeah yeah, quite small, decorated in the Victorian era, filled with you know, some fun stuff for Walton Lilan to pass the time. Mango paying attention. Sorry, yeah, yeah, I heard. It was a small apartment. In this very small apartment, there was a special thing that I think you would like. Do you know what? It was? A

grilled cheesemaker. Yeah. Wow, pretty cool. Huh So one of the cool facts about this apartment. I thought that was your fact that there was a grilled cheesemaker. That's awesome though, No, that wasn't my fact. There's a better one. So one of the cool things, and I think you guys are gonna like this kind of gives you the warm fuzzies. It gives me the warm fuzzies was that Will always had the light burning on his apartment, and when after he passed in ninety six, Disneyland decided to keep that

light burning on for him. So if you ever enter the park and you go by the Main Street firehouse, and you look up on the second floor, you'll see the light burning. And so it's kind of reminder that Walt Disney is still alive and all of us. Oh wow, so it stays. That's amazing. Yeah, I love that. That's really awesome. Alright, good, good, first fact, Mango, what you got.

So this is one of the strangest things that's happened at the happiest place on Earth, and it's at the Beatles officially broke up there and so this is way back in December of nine, but that's when John Lennon actually signed the papers that officially dissolved the band. And there's a photo of him like signing the papers and in the background you see the uh, the Polynesian Village hotel. That is pretty crazy. I had no idea about that. Is that where they fired Eddie Murphy when it was

the Clarence Is before. I don't know if you remember that. That's pretty interesting too. Alright, Well, I've got one. I'm going to start. Um, let's see which one I want to start with. Since you talked about them, you know, officially breaking up are almost officially breaking up there. I will start with a different kind of contract and that was one that almost happened. That is, Disney almost opened

a park in St. Louis. So in the sixties, Walt himself was personally involved in coming up with the plans for a Midwestern park. It was going to have a theme around Old St. Louis and rides around the Mississippi River and the Old West animatronics of Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon would have talked about the Louisiana purchase. So all these plans were in order. It looked like they were

going to move forward. And then Walt looked around and realized that he could buy a ton of swampland in Florida for a whole lot less money, and so they decided to go for that, and so in nineteen sixty five they announced that they were no longer going to be moving forward with this, but we almost had a park in the in St. Louis. That's pretty cool. Yeah,

all right, Allison, you're second fact. Okay, So when the lights go down and all the guests are clearing out of Disneyland, and there's a whole another sort of life that comes on as night closes in, and so there's of course a hard working night crew that does things like repair and repaint and do all the things that guests have weirdly done to in the day. But there's also a whole lot of cats terrifying let's start prowling Disneyland. And the thing is is, um, the disney folks are

okay with us. Why are they okay with this? To guys think, oh, you know, what is it? Does that anything to do with rodents? Absolutely? So they have about a hundred cats currently like roaming the grounds, and they take care of them too. Um. They've spayed and neutered

the cats. They have permanent feeding stations installed in two of the parks, and they generally provide like routine veterinary care like vaccinations and things like that, maybe a little flea treatment just to make sure they're not transmitting those pesky fleas well. That I mean that that makes sense. You want to get rid of the smaller mice so

that you can concentrate on the bigger ones. So the interesting thing is they've taken a little flak about it over the years too, because cat lovers have different feelings about trap and release programs and spaying, neutering all that stuff. So some people want to see the cats have a permanent home, while some people are totally okay with what Disney How's going on now? So these are just feral cats that are just around and kind of in hiding

during the day and then they come out at night. Yeah, although they're not totally in hiding, you can spot them and people do spot them and cat lovers do. And so there's a whole thing online, as you might guess, and it's called at Disneyland Cats. You can find him on Instagram. There's one particularly photogenic fellow and his name is Francisco hashtag Francisco Fridays. He's lovely. I caught a photo of him and he is bathed in a sunbeam

and it looks like he's pondering life. He's got like this coat of brown and orange and that just like his coat, is glow. It's lovely. It looks like a lovely Disney cat. Well, despite the fact that I'm pretty scared of cats, that is sweet and finally a reason to go to Disney right right to see the cat exactly All right, Well, mango, what do you have next? So this is the story I never would have found without the wonderful Stacy Conrad, but she told me this

crazy fact about how Walt Disney actually kidnapped Richard Nixon. What. So, this is when Nixon was VP, and apparently in nine Nixon visited Disneyland to dedicate the whole new mono rail system while had built, and when he and Walt took off, the Secret Service was caught off guard and they were just standing out on the platform outside, so they weren't

inside the train. But here's the funny part. So they like raced around the Secret Services all worried, and then as the train starts pulling into the platform, the Secret Service starts like chasing to to catch up with the train, and then Disney takes off again. Apparently as the train was slowing like, Nixon's daughters were so excited that they started yelling again again. So you know, Disney Disney, of

course keep them happy. That's pretty great. But what's the weirdest part about this is that the mono rail had only been tested one time to that point, so imagine ears were actually worried that it might break down or even catch on fire with Nix and his family on board. Wow, you know, it's even more weird than that, with that I also have a Nixon related Disney fact of our I'm facts. Two of them are related to Nixon, and mine is a little bit different, a little bit less fun.

And that is the fact that he delivered his I Am not a Crook speech from the ballroom of Disney's Contemporary Resort hotel. Did you did you know this? I never knew this until we were digging stuff into this.

So in nineteen seventy three, he's buried in the Watergate scandal. Well, there's a gathering of the Associated Press managing editors there and it's it's some sort of conference, and he decided to take this opportunity to go speak to them, and he sits down for one on one interview and that's where he delivers that famous quote of I Am not a crook. That's the Beatles and Nixon. Yeah, I know, it's just a big history that happened there. All right. So it's our last fact of the day, Allison, you

got one more for us? I sure do, And this is a good one. Okay. So in Disney gets together with co Tex or rather Kimberly Clark, who, as we all know, is the big multinational corporation, and they make a lot of consumer products, and co Tex in particular is a maker of women's hygiene products, like you know, things like liners and pads and tampons and stuff like that. So they get together and they're like, yeah, let's let's do this thing. Let's tell let's tell young women the

story of menstruation. And so I watched the film a bunch of times on YouTube. There is this bunch of times I did, Yeah, absolutely, it's uh. There's this lovely um lilting narration throughout, very practical to a lot of common sense. She is uncredited, which bummed me out because I wanted to find out who she was. Um. And so she takes you through the whole She takes young females through the whole story of menstruation, and there's I

thought it should be a good refresher course. Honestly. Was this distributed somewhere or like or where where was this? It was shown to millions of kids in health education classes. Very interesting. It's pretty wide ranging too. Once you get through the actual mechanics of menstruation. There's a lot of advice that comes with it, and they do a little myth busting, which I particularly dug um as brs exercise, it's good for you. Um do in fact, shower when

you're going through menstruation. That's a good thing as well. Um and some other stuff. I just got a kick out of it. Well that is super interesting, Okay, I know it's crazy that Disney was in the sponsored content game exactly. Alright, mano, you got one more. Yeah, so mine is strangely an underwear related fact. And uh so this is a headline I found from two thousand one and it caught my attention. It was in the l A Times and it reads, quote new contract gives Disney

workers clean underwear. So apparently, thanks to their team Stares union, Disney employees negotiated a new contract where they received individual underwear and they no longer had to wear the communal underwear that had been supplied. So basically this is how it worked. Like you get your goofy, your mini mouse costume, and then you wear it for the day and then you turn it back into Disney Services for laundering. But something wasn't working because enough people got license scabies that

they had to change their rules. And now employees not only get their own underwear, they also get to wash them themselves. How sweet. Wow. All right, well that's kind of a scary fact. But I decided to also end with a bit of a spooky fact as we're getting closer to Halloween here, and this one has to do

with the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. So according to Jason Searle, who's the author of a book called Pirates of the Caribbean From the Magic Kingdom to the movies, they apparently used to use real skeletons in this ride when you would go through it because they were worried that like fake skeletons or fake bones wouldn't look real enough. So they worked with u C l A. I know, yeah, like that's not a real skeleton. Everything else here looks

super real, but not those skeleton bones. And so they worked with u c l A Medical Center in order to get real bones. And this was this was the case for a little while until they decided that maybe this was a little bit insensitive to be using these actual bones from real dead people, and so they decided to return the bones. But apparently there's a lone skull and crossbon is looming in the headboard in that scene where a long dead pirate is sitting in a bed.

I think he's clutching a magnifying glass. So that's the word. I don't know if that's true, but that's what they say that that's the lone skeleton, real skeleton still in. I love the idea that, you know, like some people don't neate their bodies of science, if you could just tick the box that donates your bodies to like Disney, I would totally do that. I mean, give your organs to better causes, right, but when it comes to the bones, like sure, that'd be awesome, be forever remembered as part

of a ride. So I'm going to Disney World. Yeah. Have you guys been to Disney World. Yeah, I've been to Disney World. I've never actually been to Disneyland. Yeah yeah yeah. But Mr Tristan over here is passionate with his same Mr Toad. I hope it happens one day, Tristan. Good luck with that, alright, Mango. So those are our facts. What do you think we gotta give out a trophy today? Well, I mean, I I feel like you present some good facts,

and I had some good facts. But I really love the feral cat story along with the you know, the menstruation story and the lamp one, so I feel like Allison really deserves it. Alright, congratulations, your first visit here and you get the trophy. Oh I'm thrilled. I like, hey, you couldn't quite figure out what you were, but thrilled is what you decided on. Quite thrilled. That's terrific. We'll be back with a full length episode tomorrow. Thanks so much for listening.