Sixty-one. Disneyland. Sixty-one. Always building something new. New sites to see. New things to do at Disneyland. Sixty-one. Disneyland. Disney's Magic Kingdom Disneyland USA. Please sit well back in your seat and remain seated while our tram is in motion. For those of you returning to the hotel, our tram makes a round trip every 10 minutes. Should you wish to return via the Disneyland Allweg monorail system, you may board the trains in Tomorrowland for a journey directly to the hotel terminal.
Thank you, Garko. In this exciting age when everyone seems to be talking about the future possibilities of space travel, there's much speculation on what we will discover. Welcome to the 3028, a show about... theme park history and pop culture listery, I am Matt Parrish. And I am Disney Insider, Kevin Quigley. Oh yeah, I put that in the notes. Disney Insider, because it's the 15-5 report, Kevin. We are diving into news this week. Who knew?
That we did news. We did think we did news. At the very beginning, we were like, we're going to do Disney history, history, and news. And that lasted for about two episodes. And we said, nope. I bet people would like it if we did news. It's just so hard to keep up with news. So we won't be doing any news. This week, we have a different take on news. We're also, Kevin, we decided before the show in our gym tan and laundry period, we're not really...
working. We're just like living in a house with seven strangers where people stop being polite and start being real, real Jersey. We both love laundry. This is a very weird thing. We discovered today that we both love doing laundry. Laundry and Raisin Bran have brought this show together. Who knew?
We love it so much. We also both dabble in the Eagles a little bit. I was listening to Hell Freezes Over this morning for absolutely no reason. And I want you to put me on a highway and show me a sign. Matt, you can't hide your lion eyes. We're going to do a really cool show that's a little bit different than what we normally do. So let's take it to the limit. One more time. Just one more time. Just one more time. Before season nine.
I think all the cred we got from liking Pink Floyd is now lost. No! Oh, no. This is the last show of the hiatus. This is really interesting. And this is sort of a thesis statement of what's coming in season nine. Because we have a lot to talk about.
about. There's some Disney to talk about, but we're doing other stuff here. But before we get into anything, let's shout out our Listorians, because if you are on the Patreon and are on our Listorian tier, you get a shout out in every show. So we're going to talk of a best-selling writer, Riley Sagar, whose name I think I mispronounce every time. Is it Sagar? Nobody knows.
Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Comedy's own Dave Grinstead. We're going to talk about VIP Laura, French VIP Laura. She's amazing. Undertow Wes, who was just at Tiki Oasis. Our buddy Hot Rod Smitty, who fixes up hot rods and has a cool mustache. Susanna and Anna, you rule. The Adam Dworkin, as usual. Our homeboy, Jeff Homestead. And Matt, we've got our legacy Listorians. That's right. Our friend, DragonConJoser. Pride of the ATL. We've got our...
consult and counsel for the show and good friend, Turkey Lake Jeff. And of course, president of the 3028 fan club. That is our president, Chrissy, who just ran the Boston Marathon again. She ran the Boston Marathon and then we hung out at Wusong Road. It was real cool because, you know.
Chrissy and I hang out. It's great. It's like, it's, she's famous and she's awesome. You know, Kev, this is a show for everybody. So just reminding people, the Patreon is some place where you can go and something, we thought something should be built. Some kind of. Discord enterprise. Yeah, some kind of enterprise, entertainment enterprise, where we join the Patreon back in February, and...
We did it so we could give our listeners a chance to support us in a new way, but also to give exclusive shows and a private chat and discord early shows for our Listorians and their three tiers as kevin mentioned uh sad tomato kids and sorry Fruit Brutes, Sad Tomato Kids, and Listorians. Each tier has a specific cost, but if you're in the top two tiers, Sad Tomatoes and Listorians, you get those exclusive shows and they are awesome. It's stuff we never, I wouldn't say we never.
This stuff that, uh, we don't or are not covering on the regular show, but it might be Disney, might be Universal, who knows? It might be other pop culture stuff. We did an episode about Stephen King. We're doing an episode later on about another music thing.
It's going to be really, really amazing. We actually came up with a new show idea today for The Secret Feed. So yeah, check out our Patreon. There's going to be a link in the show notes. It's a good way to support us. It's a good way to get those secret shows. And if you're a Listorian, you get all the shows a little bit early. It's really, really cool. really cool. But Matt, we've got a lot, an epic amount of things to talk about. So let's jump in.
As Kevin and I reflect back on eight great seasons of the 3028, we thought it would be fun to preview our surprise interlinked season nine series, a series we probably never thought we would do even as recently as six months ago.
Unlike previous years where Disney has been our primary focus, this season, season nine, we're stepping out into new theme parks, but we're doing it through a few of the most popular movies of the last half century and those movies were either made by universal studios or found themselves as a partner ip inside universal studios theme park so kevin
I'm excited about this, and I assume that when people think of Universal, they often think of the big three, like E.T., Jaws, Back to the Future, but we're going... Bigger, Faster, More, the listener gets to ride the movie and the theme park attraction here on the show.
Yeah, so we decided we have a Disney series in place. Don't worry about that. We've got a lot of Disney stuff to talk about, and we're sort of going to bring a little bit of that up today. But we decided to have this whole... concept of thinking about movies because we did that live action Hello Dolly show and we really liked the format of that show and we wanted to do other movies and our buddy Turkey Leg Jeff said hey why don't you do these movies that are huge blockbusters
that eventually went into theme parks. And we're like, that is a brilliant idea. And it took us literally half a second to figure out what the movies are going to be. Yeah. And, you know, there was a little petulance that informed some of this too. Like, I'm mad about AI. and just writing a show because I'm mad. And then also Kevin's goading me into a Jurassic Park situation. So I'm like, hmm. And then we found out that the two shows were linked together in a way.
Yeah, yeah. The Disney series and the Universal series and then the series that Matt had already been talking about. Everything is interlinked through sort of one kind of big lens. And we're going to talk about all of it today. But yeah. The ideas that Matt had for movie shows were all connected. They were just one-off shows. They were going to be sprinkled throughout. They might have been in a secret show feed. And no, everything is.
everything is linked together okay so there's no look up look down on this episode but we want you to look at where and where excuse me but we want you to look at where and what you can experience through the universal and Disney lens in the coming years. So we're preparing up for that blockbuster series, but we really want to give a little preview on what's to come, not here for the 3028, but at Disney. at Universal, wherever that may be. Yeah, so I remember when...
Well, first, I remember when Universal started doing commercials and saying, the third theme park is here. It was a water park. And I was like, come on. Come on, Universal. I'm like, if that's the case, then Disney has six theme parks. But then we started hearing rumors about a fourth theme park.
I was like, whatever, Universal. I like Universal. I don't love Universal. But then it started to get real interesting. And I was like, wait, they're going to have an opening LAN that's not IP-based? Wait a minute. They're going to do this big expansion? Wait, this sounds great. And...
So they announced it in 2019 and construction begins almost immediately. And even though there's a pause during the pandemic, things are rapid on this and people were like swirling around people online this is when i was still on twitter people were like this is happening much faster than at disney and at first i was like you know i'm a disney fanboy so i was like no no disney does things
And then I was like, no, it's going real fast. What's happening here? So the online consensus was that we're going to get this new theme park pretty quickly. Yeah. And that new theme park is in central Florida. And that is Universal's... epic universe and it really in the last i would say like six to eight months you've really felt the momentum of this park
yeah it's been really it's been building slowly and slowly and slowly since 2019 but like really recently like late last year it seemed that so much of it was done and then and recently in the last couple weeks There have been people who are getting previews of this. So six years to build an entire new theme park. This is the 2025 equivalent of Disneyland opening in a year.
That's exactly right. So I want you to know, too, that if you're listening to the show, Kevin and I basically built... epic universe we found out uh because a friend of ours listener of the show was uh was working on epic universe and listening to our show so i'm just assuming that we like there's goats everywhere like Like you pick up a chair and there's like a goat. And then there's like Dr. Malcolm quotes on the walls of the bathroom. I just assumed so.
Every time you see a kitchen, it's going to be monster cereals for days. And carpet. And carpet, wall carpet, literally everywhere. So basically, we built a... So to give you some understanding about what we're talking about, we have a listener, Mogul... I'm not going to give their real name. That's a cool name, by the way. Mogul 2001. It's like amazing. It's a theme park odyssey, Kevin. It really is. And they listened to our show.
helping to build Epic Universe. They work at Epic Universe. So this was awesome. When we heard that, we're like, you're listening to our Disney theme park show while building Epic Universe. And they're like, yep. It's totally fine. Speed ramps galore. There's speed ramps. Everywhere at Epic Universe. By the way, Mogul 2001 is a Midwesterner, and we have broad definitions for what that means now on the Discord. If you're in the sad tomato kid and Lestorian group,
There's some debate about what it means to be in the Midwest. Our Discord is one of the friendliest places I've ever seen online, but there was a quote-unquote heated debate about what makes the Midwest, which is one person's like, oh, I don't think so.
And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. That's how he did it. That's a great perspective. I never thought of it that way. So anyway, join the Discord if you're not there yet. But, Kevin, yes, so we basically built Epic Universe. So we're going to talk about it here. What is Epic Universe? When is it open, where is it, all the stuff.
So it's interesting. So this is like nearby to the current Universal theme parks. So there's Universal Studios theme park, and then there's Islands of Adventure. And down the road a piece is, well, there's Volcano Bay. The other theme park. The theme park. And then there's this one, and this is called Epic Universe, the quote-unquote fourth. It's the third theme park, fourth park total that Universal's doing. It's a fourth gate.
There you go. And it's so funny because this is my brain because I'm... Silly. I was like, oh, they're building it down the street. Disney would never do that. What's going on with me? I don't know. They did that with all four theme parks. Animal Kingdom is like 20 miles away from the Magic Kingdom.
But yeah, so they're building this with five themed lands. And, you know, it made sense. They announced it. They're going to do How to Train Your Dragon. They've done that before. They're going to do Super Nintendo World. Great. Harry Potter Land. Whatever. And then they announced... dark universe which i was like what and then they announced celestial park which is not connected to anything else it is a non-ip opening land
at this new place. It is sort of art deco, sort of steampunk. It's pretty amazing. Is this like... A 1930s look at like the celestial world, like where there might be like I'm thinking like when you go to a an observatory, a planetarium inside something like that. is that is this inspired by the era of planetariums like
early 20th century? I think so. It's, it's, it feels very much like that. Like, like you stepped into a Beardsley print. It's like very much Art Deco, Art Nouveau. Um, and there's like a carousel. There's, there's also, um, a roller coaster in this area at the very beginning of the theme park, and I don't know how they're going to make that feel. But when I'm looking at Celestial Park, plus there's going to be a tiki bar in Celestial Park.
interestingly yeah that'll be fascinating uh i do think it's interesting i i was a little hmm how do i say this uh without it sounding like a criticism because it's not a criticism but i I really thought here they would open up even more new IPs. Like we know they've done Super Nintendo in Hollywood. And we also know that there's, you know, Harry Potter lands essentially everywhere now. So I really thought that they would go in a different direction.
But they did not. No, no. So Celestiki is going to be opening up there. And, like, yeah. So they have, like, they're trying to build. And there's these portals. You go into these portals. Ha ha ha! It's underwater. In a tiki bar? No, no, no. Just in Epic Universe, like you go into Celestial Park and then to get to the other lands instead of bridges or anything, you go through portals. Yeah, so this is super smart, right? Because this is the main, the site.
line criticism of the traditional universal properties is that when you're in, you know, Diagon Alley, you look across and there's like Homer Simpson, right? There's a, there's a Mohs bar. Or there's a series of office buildings that you can just see from Harry Potter World. Yeah, like, what? What is happening? Yes. But, yeah, so Five Theme Lands. We're not going to get super deep into these because we're going to talk about some of them as we go on. I wanted to briefly talk about Matt.
mentioned the big three, E.T. Back to the Future and Jaws. But... When I think of universal, I also think about universal monsters. Yeah. Because when I was a little kid, I collected all the universal. Sure. I collected Dracula, Frankenstein, and Wolfman. And so this dark universe is going to be a universal monster thing. And I had a thought about this. That's interesting.
because I just watched Wolfman last night, so I've got monsters on the brain. The Benicio del Toro one? No, this is one that came out like this year. Oh, I really want to see that. I heard it was really good. Yeah, it's a good movie. It's kind of a small story. Yeah, which is fine. I don't mind that. It's good. I like small stories. But...
I had a really interesting thought about the Universal Monsters IP versus Disney IP. So Universal basically took all these old science fiction horror novels, Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, and then made them their own IP. But now those things don't feel like IP. They just feel like they've always been part of the culture. That's right. Whereas Disney took old fairy tales, made them their own, and those still feel like Disney things.
When you hear about, like, the ride, the Curse of the Werewolf ride, you sort of like, oh, they're just using a werewolf. Right, because, like, Jack Nicholson could be in this. Who knows? Exactly. Oh, God, that movie. He's so good. Wolf. And then there's like vampires stalking this town. It could be sinners. It's a Ryan Coogler joint. It's a Ryan Coogler joint. He's got a new land in California Adventure and now in Dark.
universe. But I just I kind of love that idea that like IPs existing for so long that they don't feel like IPs anymore. I mean, this really makes sense, right? When you're looking at like, what is Disney announcing in the last 12 months, right? Like a villains thing and then relating it back to what Universal is doing. Like, I'm not going to be mad about any of this. Like, let's say we get both villains and Dark Universe. Like, I'm going to be...
pretty excited. The horror fan in me likes both the sort of sanitized version of it, the sort of old timey Hollywood version of it. And I also like modern horror. So for me, this is like a real win. I do wonder though. How does this influence the typical guest? of Epic Universe. Like, is my 13-year-old, my 8-year-old, are they going to find something they like at Dark Universe? Well, you know, Universal is one of the biggest things they're known for is Halloween Horror Nights. And so this is...
going to bring those people in. I don't know if Little kids are going to like this, this version as well. This area, you know, they won't be able to do this because they're going to be a little bit too young. But worry not, kids, because we're going to talk about something very soon that they will like. But yeah, and then there's also...
Nintendo World, there's How to Train Your Dragon, you know, the Harry Potter stuff. And so there's also been mentioned that there's going to be expansions coming. One expansion specifically to Super Nintendo World is going to be Luigi's Mansion, which is a... kiddie horror series yes
It's also a game. It's a game. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. There's Luigi. And Luigi goes in to the haunted house, and he has to suck up ghosts. It's Castlevania for Luigi. It's Castlevania for kids. It's great. And then they... The CEO of Universal said, and also they're considering an edition of attractions themed to Wicked. Popular. I mean. That's not a bad idea. So, I mean, this is just a me thing, but, like, I'm a huge Wizard of Oz fan. I like Wicked. I like it.
But I love The Wizard of Oz. Well, The Wizard of Oz is one of my favorite films, and I love Wicked. I love the movie Wicked. I tried to read the book, and I wasn't into it. But... you know if you bring in wicked you can probably also bring in other oz stuff you know like so so like that wouldn't be a bad thing at all
Disney MGM Studios had lots of Oz stuff. Even Epcot had Oz Great and Powerful stuff for just a minute. So yeah, I would love to see a return. A return to Oz. A return to Oz. Oh my God. Veruca Balk. What's her name? Veruca Balk. That was close. I was mixing it up with Veruca Salt.
Yeah, we want the Farooza bulk, not the James Franco. But yeah, so Epic Universe is opening this month, and we'll be talking about it over the context of Season 9, because we're going to talk about those blockbuster... movies uh the big three we mentioned two more that we alluded to and then also one more that's gonna sort of like
Kind of be a side talk to one of the other movies. Side hustle. Side hustle. Side hustle. By the way, I think they did Super Nintendo World here because we did a 3028 show on Nintendo Land. Look, everyone. When we do a show, a theme park show, Universal listens. And I expect one of these future spaces will have a McDonald land.
with the McDonnell Lane characters. It's going to look like the 70s. You're going to get to climb inside Mayor McCheese's mouth. The slides will all be metal. You'll burn your rump. It will hurt so bad to go down those slides and you will remember it fondly. We're going to... You'll remember it.
Like it was fun. Oh, McDonald land. I love you. So strange. But okay. So we, so Epic universe going to be really cool. Very neat. I'm looking forward to going. But Matt, this was not the only universal situation that got announced. And this is kind of the reason why we wanted to do this. They also announced that they're going to build the first UK theme park. I did not.
track this at all. I have been so closely following what's happening in Texas that I miss this completely. Well, the funniest thing about this is that Rob Yeo, who, graphic designer friend... Sort of a friend of the show. We love Rob Yo. Definitely a friend. He's great. But he...
for a while was doing this thing on Twitter and then on Blue Sky about like Disney Parks UK and every theme park, every time it was like, it's raining again, it's raining again. So they had to keep all the rides closed. But yeah, so... I want to do an extraordinarily brief history of Universal in Europe. So since the late 1800s, there was this theme park called Tibidabo Amusement Park in Barcelona, or Barcelona. In the late 1980s, the people behind it wanted to build a...
a second park in Spain and call it Tibby Park. They paired with the people behind Busch Gardens and then Tibby, the Tibadabo amusement park people dropped out. They're like, you take it, Busch Gardens. Here, Busch Gardens, this is your... your property now. So then the folks behind Madame Tussauds Wax Museums, Matt, and Legoland, they're the same group. Makes sense. It's weird. I didn't know this. They paired up with them and a bunch of other companies, and then they renamed the idea Port...
adventurer. Did you know that Legoland and Madame Tussauds were together? I didn't. I had no idea. But it makes sense because it's like small municipal entertainment. Like... Wax museums and Legolands are like, where do you always find them in like cities, right?
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So in 1998, the park got sold to Universal. So Universal owned it. They renamed it Universal Port Adventure or Port Adventura, and it became the first Universal park in Europe. That's pretty amazing. And then they changed the name. came to universal Mediterranean. And then they made it a full resort destination. They had a.
two hotels and then, you know, it's a big thing. And then they sold the park and moved out. The name reverts back to Porta Ventura and now it's owned by new owners. So there's no more Universal Park in Europe. But now there's going to be a new purpose-built Universal theme park in the UK, which, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not that great on global stuff, but it used to be part of Europe until Brexit, right?
I mean, it used to be part of the economic relationship, like the European Union. It's still part of Europe. Okay. Yeah, it's still part of Europe, but it used to be part of the EU, which was a big like, hey, it's a block of Western, essentially Western European countries.
that would co-promote one another's economies to help sort of stabilize all of the economies in Europe. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, so Brexit, I mean, there's some countries that... have never been in the european union like norway they wanted to control their own economy because it's very specific to norway fishing and oil and then the you know the technically the brits who have led
Much of the economic stabilizing force within European politics for a long time because of their global reach prior to the last century have always been sort of one of the largest economic partners there. And so I think. There are many people there that wanted them to become more isolated.
Isolationism. We're back, baby. Isolationism. It's the 1890s again. Here we go. And then everybody was like, oh, I really wish we didn't do that. Anyway. Let's have partners. Let's keep our partners. Let's keep those things happening. But anyway, so Universal's first ever theme. Park is coming to the UK. It's located in Bedford, England, which is sort of near London, but it's like close to airports. It's close to rail travel. It's infrastructure. It's infrastructure.
About 50 kilometers, I have to say kilometers because it's British, north of where Warner Brothers has a studio in Watford. So this is, it's amazing. So we don't know. anything super specific, it's going to be near a rail line near Luton Airport, and it's going to have a 500-room hotel, but nothing specific. Like, you look at the conceptual artist rendering, and there's, like, some...
roller coasters and some things that are lit up, but there's nothing specific here. Yeah, it's very Epcot-ish, right? Where you've got a central lagoon and everything sort of surrounds it. I found that kind of fascinating. So instead of the...
like hub and spokes model that we see at a lot of parks or even the sort of you know porthole and discovery model that we're finding now we have this very large lagoon so if they keep this structure that would be interesting you know what's what's interesting is that
actually looks like the redo of Disney Adventure World, which used to be Disney Studio Parks Paris. And, you know, with that big lagoon in the center and then like off to the side, there's like other stuff. I wonder if this is just a European...
slash like UK thing that they do over there because it looks very similar to the new rendering of that. So that's interesting that they're going to be building this in the UK. I don't know. There is a lot of rain to... contend with in the uk this is like building a park in seattle um so i i don't know anything about it it's going to be sort of a smaller park um our friend mogul 2001 said it was going to be a bit of an experimental park but he couldn't give us any more or they couldn't actually
I don't know their gender. They couldn't give us anything more on that. But Matt, you alluded to this other announcement recently. You talked about it just a few seconds ago. are you talking about universal texas yeah buddy okay well i'm only excited about this because it's like five hours from my house so this is like the most important development of my life uh it's a universal property uh near here now of course we have silver dollar city which i'm very
fond of and the hershen properties in dollywood i love all of them uh dollywood is 10 hours from me though that's pretty far silver dollar city is about 32 minutes from my house which is pretty exciting i can go there pretty much anytime i want but you know i like new experiences and you And I think this is important because this is the first of the big two to basically move a theme park or find a footprint for theme parks in the continental US away from California.
and Florida. And of course, that is the Universal Studios property in Frisco, Texas, AKA the Universal Kids Resort. And so I was thinking about this as you were talking about the offerings at Epic Universe. it sort of makes sense that this sister park would exist and hyper focus, not just focus, but hyper focus on younger kids. Yeah, it's interesting. Like I...
I don't think I could picture Disney doing something like this. I agree. Because Disney's whole ethos is there's something for everybody here. I think if they did just a kids' park, I think people would be like, I don't know. It's not gonna be fun. But Universal has these like tears. of things that are focused, you know, some geared towards adults, some geared towards teens, and some geared towards kids. I think it's an easier match for Universal to do a kid-specific resort and theme park.
Maybe. I mean... Am I wrong? I don't know. I could be wrong. You would think it would be Disney, though, right? Yeah. Like, maybe. But I think a lot of this is because of the television properties that are so... much a part of the younger, and it's really not television, it's streaming. The streaming properties that are part of the lives of younger kids now reminds me a lot of what Disney tried to do in like the late aughts with Disney Junior.
And now instead of it being on a sort of universal junior channel, well, you can find a lot of these different universal properties, kids, younger kids properties around streaming sites, Netflix, and et cetera. And so that's kind of what the focus is. So let's look at big picture here.
2023, I remember this announcement because I was very excited. Universal Parks and Resorts announces a one-of-a-kind theme park unlike any other in the world, specifically designed to inspire fun for families with young children. So it's emphasized right there. concept set in a lush green landscape.
and featuring immersive theme land celebrates Universal's iconic brand of entertainment, humor, and innovation, and brings to life its beloved characters and stories in ways that will wow even the youngest theme park goers. The proposed park will be designed to be more intimate and engaging for you.
younger audiences, and will be sized for a regional audience, meaning it's not going to be that big. It will be full of family-friendly attractions, interactive and playful shows, character meet and greets, unique merch. fun food and beverage venues. Although smaller in size, it will carry the same quality as Universal's other larger resort destinations. So I think based on its size, this feels very trial and error.
Yeah, they want to see what this is like. And when we talked to our buddy, you know, they said that it's the way it was phrased was interesting. Yes, it's, you know, when it's starting off as a kid's resort. And I'm like. Interesting feature. So it's going to feature stuff from like Minions, Gabby's Dollhouse, Shrek, Jurassic World and Trolls and Puss in Boots. so when i think about some of these properties like it's very interesting spongebob is very much it's huge it's huge but it's also
It's geared towards kids but also towards teens. Yeah. It's got a lot of adult humor that you don't really think about until you're an adult. My 13-year-old loves SpongeBob. And a guy I used to manage on the morning show back in iHeartRadio, he was kind of like a big kid. He loved SpongeBob also. Yeah, SpongeBob is a thing that like...
big kids like. Minions are a thing that tiny children and your aunt likes. Yeah, yeah. She buys you Minion stuff and you're like, I don't even even like minions thanks aunt thanks auntie so funny minions is weird i don't even understand minions but it's fine is unsettling to me um but yeah so so i can see where this is coming from you're
But now, you know, I made my statement earlier, but now I'm thinking about it. I'm like, Disney, in this case, is actually making more Universal theme parks than Universal is. Because they're doing, like... They're doing it for everybody, whereas Universal is saying, okay, we're going to have this land for adults and this land for kids. Right. So that's interesting, and I wonder if the gambit's going to pay off.
I like that there's room to grow. I mean, they basically just announced what they would have there. There's also going to be an adjacent resort, which is pretty cool. And so they gave us an update just a few months ago. It's about 25 to 30 miles north of Dallas, so lots of infrastructure there. You know, you got your parkways and stuff that go up to Frisco. Frisco is kind of like a really big suburb.
of Dallas, if you've never been. It's got Ikea stores there, so it's big enough to have that kind of thing, but also small enough where it's not Dallas. And so you've got a lot of infrastructure there that would support. is what I'm trying to say, a theme park property like a Universal, but I almost feel like they short sold it. Like they should have gone. I really feel like they should have gone all in, planted the flag and said, we're here. Yeah, it's just interesting that they're.
Not to make a puss in boots joke, but they're pussyfooting around this. It feels a little bit like they are... They're sort of being timid a little bit. Yes, yes. And I don't know why. Yeah, they're getting in and they're like, okay, it's going to be a kids thing. And then if it's popular, okay, we'll add some stuff for teens. And then maybe if that's popular, we'll do a whole grown-up area. Very, very interesting. Texas is a good place for a theme park. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, the weather is almost perfect for a theme park. It's pretty hot. Dallas is not as hot as the very southern ends of Texas, obviously. But as far as like travel goes, it's very centralized, obviously. I mean, Midwest. Westerners can easily go there. Canadians can come down from Canada and go there. You and I, or sorry, someone like you and someone from California basically could get there in the same amount of time, a couple hours. So that's kind of cool.
I mean, to me, it makes a lot of sense to have Texas as like the next, like the third state with like major properties like this, but it just has never happened. It is a little surprising that Disney has never done Texas. I know. Or somewhere around there. Yeah, because it just would make sense. The climate's good, and it just makes sense for a theme park. I mean, it's going to be hot. So Anaheim, Orlando, and Dallas.
I mean, these all Frisco, these all sort of work. So, you know, maybe with Epic, with Universal doing all this stuff in the UK, Texas, and even Epic Universe, I think this might start spurring Disney to do more. stuff. I think they're waiting and seeing, right? And, you know, the current economic climate's weird. We're not having a rush of international travelers. And so that, I think, is probably, you know, makes Universal's decision to make this a more regional park smart.
But like hopefully in the next decade, this is something that like Universal says, hey, we're building on. And then other people say, oh man, let's, we got to get in on this. Like as people, you know, if you build it, people, you know, they will come. Yeah, and also stuff like Epic Universe itself, it kind of makes Disney's whole shortening of what was going to be happening at Epcot makes it feel a little bit like sus. I know, I know.
It feels very shareholder decision-y than it does like, hey, the future of this theme park doesn't support this, right? Like, I don't believe that. Yeah. And I think, you know, Disney is still extremely popular. But as you said, right now, international guests are down. Prices are probably going to go up. They're probably going to be looking for ways to cut. Like even Bob Iger said, we're going to we're trying to find ways to.
to make it more affordable because even he's like, I think it's getting too expensive too fast. And right now the international tourism is not there as much and tariffs are happening. So that might bring things more expensive. So we're going to see what happens. But I do want to bring up some interesting stuff about Disney as we close this out. Because Disneyland Forward was announced a little while ago, and I didn't understand it. I thought you made this up.
No, it's real. Disney forward. I was like, what? Is this a Kevin thing? No, no. So I was super confused. So when you're doing research, sometimes you have to be... very clear about what's legit and what's clickbait so when i first started disneyland forward i went to all these sites and it was like and they were like disney's finally building a third theme park i'm like
Really? Is that going to happen? This was everywhere. There was YouTubes. And then I started listening to the language. Third theme park, question mark. They could be building this here, question mark, so that I had to do a little bit more digging to find out real truth stuff. And Disneyland Forward is a real thing. Basically, they...
Let's go back to the Michael Eisner thing. So his plans to make Disney parks bigger and better, he wanted to do Disneyland as a multi-day resort, new hotels, new theme parks, downtown area. He was really trying to make it Disney World West. And some of those ideas worked.
Some of them worked. Yeah, downtown Disney has been successful. I mean, the extra resort stays that you get now at Disneyland are super important, I think, to the, you know, to the sort of economics of that region, sort of Disney keeping their dollars. on site vice you going down the street to a sort of iDrive adjacent resort stay so yeah i think a lot of those things have worked the idea of like consolidating all the space i mean think about the parking lot becoming
California Adventure. At first, you know, some people liked it better as a parking lot. But now over time, it's like, well, thank goodness they did that then when costs were less. And now they can simply improve upon that. you know that gate and so when you add all those things together yeah michael eisner's plan ultimately to consolidate the space keep everything like sort of in anaheim and together i think has made sense and has worked
Well, so unfortunately, one of the biggest issues with Disneyland, which isn't Disneyland's fault, is that when Walt opened it, it was part of this rural community. And he actually didn't buy that much land because he couldn't. He didn't have the money. And then what happened is a bunch of businesses and other hotels and everything.
sprang up around it, kind of boxing it in. Wonderland Liquors, Kevin. Wonderland Liquors. We've mentioned Wonderland Liquors several times on the show. It's great. Start your own tiki bar in your hotel room. Yep. So the total amount of land that Disney owns in Anaheim is 4,800 acres, which sounds like a lot. Walt Disney World is 30,000 acres. So they can't really expand beyond that 4,800 acres. Disneyland do? How do you expand if you can't expand? So this is what Disneyland Forward is.
The city of Anaheim has all these structures in place saying, you know, you bought that land to build hotels on. You can only build hotels. You bought that land to build, you know, like a green space. You can't do anything else. So Disney petitioned Anaheim and said, hi, can we actually use that land that we bought for parking for theme park stuff? Can we use, can we privatize a couple of these roads and, you know, make them part of the resort?
as opposed to roads that cut into the resort. And... over the course of the last few years they finally got anaheim to say yes to all this stuff uh so uh they couldn't build anything on the the areas that because anaheim wasn't zoned for it and now they are rezoning and reusing so anaheim approves this 1.9 billion expansion that could glow up to 2.5 billion over the next 10 years. So here are some...
areas that Disney wants to improve on. They want to add stuff to the west of Disneyland Drive, you know, where Pixar Place Hotel and the Disneyland Hotel are. The Toy Story lot, they want to kind of get rid of that and build stuff on there. There's a cast member lot on Disney Way. And Magic Way, which is a road, they want to take parts of that road and sections of Disneyland Drive and actually make it part of the resort.
I like this. I mean, what you're doing is you're just adding real estate that can be converted into theme park space. Yeah. Yeah. There's like, and there's stuff in downtown Disney, like the. ESPN zone that's not doing anything. It's done. Yeah, those things are gone. I mean, look at the boardwalk, right? They've completely removed it. It's the cake bake.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So ESPN was an investment that they did and they shouldn't have. So, well, maybe they were good for a little while. They were for a while. Yeah, TV is just not a good investment anymore. Right, right. So this is going to be like... over the course of the next decade. And in addition, so when Anaheim approved this, they said, okay, Disney, you have to pay 5 million in street and transportation improvements to Anaheim. You have to spend 30 million on affordable housing.
nearby and you have to do all this other stuff for like anaheim you have to spend eight million dollars on public parks so that's all part so anaheim is going to get more it's going to get more beautiful oh can i can i say in the greater like political argument here is that I think California owes Disney a little bit. I mean, keeping that gate closed for a year, a year.
Right? Like the rest of the U.S. is like open and Disneyland is closed. Like that was bananas. It was weird. It was very weird. And yeah, so... And there's some arguments. I was reading a lot of news reports about this, and some arguments are like, you know, I can't believe we have to do this to Disney. Our little town of Anaheim, you know, should not be supporting Disney. I'm like, your little town of Anaheim wouldn't exist without Disney.
It's fair, right? It's true. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I know it's a billion dollar, multi-billion dollar company, but also like... You know, it supports the entire town around it. This is like Kissimmee putting the screws to Disney in Central Florida. Like Kissimmee is not even a thing without this other entertainment property. Yeah. Yeah. So so they're going to be.
It's a lot of the sites I was reading like this could happen. This might happen. But it's so weird. So they have like these slivers of land that they can add to both Disneyland and California Adventure. There's like. a possible new land that's not connected to any of the theme parks uh it's not a land it like i'm not sure what they would build there it's some sort of entertainment thing maybe they'll go underground and like go beyond the berm in some way um there's a lot of like
It's a little bit like the Universal stuff, the artist concept drawings, where there's a lot of park stuff, but I don't know where this exists, and I don't know what's actually there. So they basically just have a little space to build around land. hands. And so we're going to see what happens there. But, you know, during D23, they announced like Avatar Land is coming. They announced a new Cocoa Boat Ride is coming. And these are sort of part of that Disneyland forward. And so they can do that.
if they keep doing these investments correctly. And if they don't spend that entire $2.5 billion over the next 10 years, they have to give $600 million to Anaheim. So they should really spend that money on Disney. Very interesting. There's like concept art. There's like stuff for the theme parks. They're going to raise a parking lot and put up paradise. No, they're going to put up another parking lot that has more, that has different parks. So...
This almost reminds me a little bit of the Chinese government. The Walt Disney Company had pitched this to Anaheim back in the late 2019, early 2020 time period. A 30-year theme park expansion. plan so that's what this is including all the revenue things that you were talking about there like investment in the overall sort of success of anaheim's economic infrastructure that was part of disney's pitch not the other way around
This is so strange. Yeah, very weird, very weird, very weird. LA Times has a lot of articles that are like paywalled, but like if you really want to dive deep into this, like it's all out there. But Kevin, do you remember a couple years ago, just because we were doing this show, probably on a 15-5 report, by the way. remember when they announced that big sort of hotel thing that was supposed to
Sit like next to downtown Disney. Do you remember this? I sort of remember it. And they canceled all of it. Yeah. Well, because what's going to happen? Yeah. Yeah. This is one of those things where they like announced too early and then they had to rethink everything because of this.
So what's going to eventually happen is if this all goes according to plan, the Disneyland Hotel is going to be surrounded by theme park areas. Like it's not just going to be on the edge of a property. There's going to be like... it's going to sort of be in the middle of theme parks. So that's kind of exciting, or at least the theme park lands. And yeah, so they're going to, they basically want to enclose everything and make it feel like more of a singular experience. Yes.
the Paradise Pier Hotel or the Pixar Pier Hotel. My favorite hotel, Kevin. There's a Surfing Goofy in the lobby, but like... They're like way off on the other. You have to go outside the berms, the whole thing. It's a mile away. It's ridiculous. And so but it's an official. So they want to sort of enclose that and put all that inside the theme park area as well. So it's going to. is gonna feel a lot more like Disney World West, but it's still gonna be very, very small. It's walkable.
It's the same walk as Lighthouse Point. You'll need a speed ramp, a walker, some orthopedic shoes. It's very close. A hat umbrella. Yeah. So... So this has been sort of a preview. So season nine is coming up pretty soon. And you're going to, we're going to be talking about those blockbuster films. We're going to be talking about universal theme parks in the lens of those.
And I also just gave you a hint of the other big series that we're going to talk about. But you'll see the concept art. The concept art. We'll have concept art later. Out later this month. Cover art for Season 9 is going to start appearing on the Patreon and on the Blue Sky, so take a look out for that. But Matt, we've got Season 9 coming. We've got a lot to look forward to.
Well, Kevin, thank you so much for your look at Disney forward. And when you said that first, I thought you were just Disney positive. I thought Disney positive and Disney forward were the same thing coming up with a term that made it sound like you were very, um,
Open to new Disney things. Like, Kevin, Kevin, inventing these, like, portmanteaus is really good. Disney Ford, that looks like a great word. And I was like, no, it's a real thing. You're like, oh. You're theme park positive. I know that. I really love the theme. park. So yeah, this is going to be interesting, Matt. Season nine is going to be a wild ride. And not just because we're probably going to mention Mr. Toad again.
i'm very nerdy i really actually like it when we dive into the economic parts of this and the political implications uh but i mean i teach i'm a school teacher Right. None of this stuff used to interest me in only doing the show because you got so into it. I'm like, oh, yeah. So they have to give 30 million dollars to, you know.
Anaheim because of the theme, the public parks. And yeah, so I love this stuff now too. And I hope that you love it. I read Disney War on Matt's advice. And I was like, oh, this is interesting. There you go. That's a pretty good book if you've never read it.
It's like corporate intrigue, but it keeps you involved. And for someone who's as critical of corporations as I am, it makes no sense that I would be interested in any of this. Well, it's funny that we're both very critical of corporations and we do a podcast about theme parks. Owned by major corporations, Matt. They're going to have their own army. It's going to be the movie Aliens.
It's going to be the Wayland Corporation. Anyway, Kevin, I'm very excited for season nine. We are not doing an alien show. No, we're not. No, we had to we had to nail down the movies that we want to talk about and the theme park experiences. And unfortunately, we decided not to do one on aliens, which is bad because we can't now talk about that really terrible audio animatronic.
of Sigourney Weaver in The Great Movie Ride. It was not an audio animatronic, Kevin. It was just an animatronic. She never said a word. She just turned her head jerkingly left and right. That's not what audio means. Don't you know Walt? By the way, those alien animatronics were actually awesome. They were so good, and they were so scary. And they stunk. They had a weird smell. Yeah, there was a very, like, alum smell. It was very bad.
Anyway, we won't be doing an Alien show, but we will definitely be doing other films, probably all films you have seen, so that's really exciting, and all films you probably like with a theme park twist. Yeah, yeah. And we're going to be tackling something very interesting about Disneyland Resort that we love talking about. It was sort of the idea of one of our first shows.
And we're going back to it because stuff is happening. Stuff has happened over the years. And it's a very tumultuous topic. And I can't wait to do a series about it. So thank you so much for listening. Join the Patreon. If you're not already on the Patreon, keep listening. Season 9 is not just going to be these two series. We're going to have a lot of other, way a lot of other episodes to talk to you about. We have more Listeries. We have more Histories of Places. We have an interview.
Coming up. We never do it. We did one interview with the guy that wrote about Disney's America. And then, you know. One of my favorite topics that we're going to go back to a couple times. We have an interview sort of about that. So keep a listen out for that. But without... Every time. Every time. This is three times in a row. I literally... The last three shows I edited...
I was like, oh, he did it again. I did it again. So from all of us here at the 3028, to all of you out there, thanks so much. And we look forward to seeing you in season nine. So, Kevin, Disney likes to do this to us. They announce big things immediately after our 15-5 reports. Yeah, so we haven't done a 15-5. D23 is basically what our 15-5 reports are.
And then as soon as we finish a D23 episode, they're like, hey, hey, guys, we're going to open something brand new that we didn't talk about literally three days ago. So Matt and I recorded this episode, and we were talking about Disneyland Forward and Epic. all this stuff literally like two days later guess what guys Abu Dhabi I'm like really now I gotta learn about this in five seconds and we just recorded the show so here we are to talk about Disney's foray
into Abu Dhabi. Did you see this coming, Kevin? No, I didn't. And what's weird about not seeing this coming is that I should have. So Warner Brothers has a theme park there that I had been wanting to go to. A friend of mine actually was an engineer on it, like a placemaker. And, you know.
it was indoors. And I was like, that's kind of neat. So Jeff and I, Turkey Leg Jeff and I had talked about maybe going there, but I had always been a little worried about this. They had been working on this apparently for 10 years. So they've been working on this for about 10 years, and there was some report about nine years ago talking about they were going to open a Disneyland in Israel, in Haifa, Israel. And they're like, no, no, we're not going to open it.
to do that and then finally they made a deal and this is going to be happening so What's happening here is that it's going to be a little bit like Tokyo Disney. They are leasing all of their characters and brands to this company in Abu Dhabi. And that company is going to build and maintain this park. So it's not going to be a Disney-built, Disney-owned park. It's going to be a leased park, which is fine. You know, what's the company? The Mural Group.
And so what's happening with the Middle East right now is that oil is, they're sort of moving away from oil. I'm just mm-ing about the Middle East. Keep going, sir. Oh, no, we have a lot to talk about the Middle East. They're moving away from oil and trying to move into tourism. It has not. super worked for them. They have this whole like series of islands, um, that are manmade islands and they are, um,
They're trying to build stuff on it. So, you know, there's a SeaWorld there. There's a Warner Brothers world. There's a Ferrari world. And so they're like, we're going to bring Disney into this. And that's going to bring our tourism. There's some problems.
with the tourism aspect of Abu Dhabi. I don't know if that's where you want to pick up, Matt. I mean, I don't really want to talk about that, honestly. I will say that Abu Dhabi architecturally is one of the most forward cities in the Middle East. the uae and so um that's interesting in terms of like disney uh settling there i see this strictly as kind of a uh hmm a uh
I don't want to call it a cash grab, but it's an investment opportunity for Disney with very little stake, very little risk. Basically, so... On our Hyperion War show, we talked a little bit about President Obama visiting Walt Disney World and saying we really need to attract foreign visitors. We need Brazilians to come here and spend all the money. And it takes nothing.
away from the u.s and only brings in foreign money uh so here basically disney is saying you do all the work we'll get all the money and it it works out for them in a oh go on In a strictly business sense, if you're just looking at dollars and cents, it makes a lot of sense.
The follow through is there. And if tourism does come to Abu Dhabi. Well, I think some of the volatility in the marketplace, at least in the United States in the last 10 years, you know, and the changing of the guard in D.C. and the sort of push pull of fiscal policy. See, all of those things make international investment a lot more attractive for disney especially in a place that's very cash rich um and maybe doesn't bend to the whims of wall street and so i see this as like
hey, how come Universal is going to Texas and Disney is going to Abu Dhabi? Because they're just going to make money on this and they don't have to worry about the internal politics of what's happening in Austin. Right, exactly, exactly. And, you know, what's interesting is that
overseas right now for Disney, they are slightly down, just a little bit. They're like 6% down from last year in Disney parks. I don't know if that is balanced to all overseas. I think the Hong Kong park is a little down. The Paris parks are a little down. I believe the Tokyo parks are a little up because of Fantasy Springs. And I'm not... quite sure about Shanghai. So one thing that I need to bring up here is that Abu Dhabi is not great with human rights. It is illegal to be gay there.
legal to be trans there. It is – and traveling with somebody who is not your – like if you're a woman traveling with a man who's not your partner, that is suspect. Any public – it's bad. It's becoming more and more like the U.S. every day, Kevin. Oh my god. They've created a culture in a western image. So it's very frustrating because, look, a lot of Disney's dollars, especially the tourist dollars, the people that Tokyo attracts, are younger people. There are friend groups. Dinks.
Yeah. What is that? Dual income, no kids. Dual income, no kids. Yeah, thanks. And then, you know, not for nothing, but there is a huge queer audience for Disney. The gays like Disney? Oh, I know it's a big shock.
And the other thing here is... Go ahead. Keep going. It's fun. No, but like Disney has, especially lately, been extremely like, no, we are on your side. We are, you know, and then they sort of stepped away from the political... but they have always been, at least for the last 10, 20 years, very forward thinking in their treatment of LGBTQ. So this move feels like a massive step back and it feels like. Just kind of like almost a violation of what they've been talking about recently.
Which is what a lot of companies have been doing in the last few months, right? Like, I mean, Target is one of those companies. It's like, we have a philosophy, but no, we don't. We don't have it anymore. And that really, you know, bit Target in the butt. They're like, you know, we're going to.
We're going to capitulate. And they started losing money so fast because of it. Boycotts. And so. It goes both ways, right? There's this. I mean, in the Midwest, you have as recently as like two days ago, you have Nate Bargatze. And he comes out and he's like, I want to create.
a media empire that's, you know, Disney has gone away from its audience. I want to be, I want to listen to my audience. It's like, well, we're in such a weird place right now where no one really knows who their audience is. So they almost have to pick one.
Yeah, I actually was going to bring up the Nate Bragazzi thing because I didn't totally agree with him. I agree with him to a point. I love Nate Bragazzi. He's super funny. Very funny. He's super funny and family friendly in a way that's not treacly, I guess. He's really, really good. I think that an audience for Disney is so wide-ranging. It's huge. It's international.
It's international. And I think that that was part of his point. He's like, they shouldn't be international. And I'm like, they've been international since the 80s. It's fine. And they... For the most part, I'm going to look at the overarching of Disney and say that for the most part, they have been true to, I think, a lot of their values. If not... all the way down at least superficially but this seems like such a such a weird
decision on their part. And by the way, I thought that Josh DeMar was gay until yesterday. Oh. He's not gay, Kev. Josh DeMar. I found that out. I think it would be... We would be remiss, Kev, if we didn't mention, this is the 15-5 report, so it gets heavy. The human rights issues that also take place in China. So let's not forget that I'm sure the people of Hong Kong are very mindful of this in the last decade, as are people throughout, you know, the traditional...
continental parts of China as well. And so, yeah, to me, this is not a stretch. Because of the China relationship, I see Abu Dhabi as like the same. For me, I don't know what it was about me. I was able to sort of, because Hong Kong was like, was not, when Disney partnered with Hong Kong, they were kind of not part of China still. Yeah, pretty much.
Pretty much. And then they went mainland, and I was like, I don't know if that's a great idea, but for some reason it didn't hit me like this is hitting me. Because this is new, and that's old. Yeah, although when it first happened, I remember the whole thanks Shanghai thing. That was a whole situation. But yeah, so one of the things, so let's talk numbers again, because, you know, human rights violations are...
Just the worst. France. France. France. France. We're cheering for France and Tokyo. France and Tokyo. France and Tokyo. And Anaheim. Sort of. Maybe. In Texas. Not really. Kind of. Kind of. A little. But so let's break it down. So this is not counting. So Disney has said recently that they are going to be, over the next 10 years, putting six.
billion into their parks. So that is a big deal. And this is not included in that number. That's correct. So this whole thing, this is not taking away from that at all. So that's a big plus. You know, and I think it's going to be domestic. Domestic parks, Hong Kong and Paris, because Tokyo is also a lessee and they're doing their own thing. let's be honest too this is about financing what's happening at imagineering as well right like they're fitting the r d
for fitting the bill for R&D for projects that you may eventually see in U.S. parks. Right, exactly. So this is, I mean... This is a good business decision. This is a bad moral decision, in my opinion. You may have a different opinion. But I really... Yeah, this will eventually... you know, ripple back to the domestic and the other parks. I mean, look at Tron. Correct. Tron was a Shanghai ride. Tomorrowland.
It's in Tomorrowland Magic Kingdom, and they didn't take out anything. That was a strict ad, which was kind of great. So... I don't know. There's opportunity. Every every business decision right now is like this. Like it's and maybe it has been for like 100 years, but we just learned it in school where it's all sort of, you know, rose colored glasses like the modernism, the core. corporations will save us all. We talk about it all the time. And so...
You know, we talked about Disney in the Caribbean and we're like, oh, and there was bleach fishing. Yeah. You know, it's like there's all of these sort of latent effects like we didn't see this coming or we knew we were going to be, you know. Coral busting. We'll just call everything coral busting. We knew we were going to be coral busting, but we didn't really want you to know. We want you to focus on this other thing. Yeah, and like you said, Abu Dhabi is a hugely technologically forward.
place and this so you know if if we do want a Jetsons future like we've been wanting maybe uh on this show you know maybe this is a way to to to get that you know we borrow some of those technologies and bring them here um We don't know. Like Matt has said, we don't know what's going to be happening with the future of money here and infrastructure and all this stuff. Right now, I'm going to say right now as of all the time, it's...
I think it's always been a volatile time. I miss the 90s. By the way, there were like two recessions in the 90s also. There were so many. Yeah. I want to punch in one more thing. All right. And this is again, this is like 2020 hindsight. There were people, a lot of people in the United States who were either participants in or related to people who fought in World War Two. Disney partnering with Japan in the early 80s also probably felt morally problematic at the time.
Yeah, yeah, because it's interesting because they did an 83 and that was before people were really super comfortable with, you know. There were no Walkmans yet. No Walkmans, you know, everybody has a Mitsubishi, everybody has a Toyota. That all happened.
You know, it was happening a little bit, but it was... Not then, though. Not then. So, yeah, maybe... Yeah, we're thinking now because, you know, Japan has been our ally for such a long time. Right. And it's interesting. There was a comedian... and Brian Posehn, who actually said something...
You know, in one of his stand-ups, he's like, you know, who knows who's going to be our ally? And this was, like, right after 9-11. And he was like, maybe the Taliban's going to be our allies in, like, 20 years. And I'm like, that's silly. And now, yeah. Exactly. Right. So the you the enemy of my enemy is my friend or whatever. I mean, it's it's my grandfather was at Normandy. Right. So like he was very and he lived until the year 2002.
So in 1983, you know, I'm sure the partnerships with Japan were very dicey in the minds of many Americans. And so it just stands to reason that we're in the ocean right now, like swimming in it and seeing all this happening in real time. Everything in the Middle East right now just feels like, oh, really? I mean, you and I were very present, mindful on 9-11. Not saying the UAE was participating in that, but...
There are all kinds of stories about who may have been a participant that have come out in the news since that time, not just the Taliban. So, yeah, this is the 15-5 report, Kevin. We get heavy. We get very heavy. heavy on the show. This is why we don't do that. We don't do the news because the news is a lot. It's too now. It's way too. I love looking at history. I will love talking about this period of time when we are on our 20th season. Yes.
when we're riding the, what coaster are we going to get because of the Abu Dhabi relationship? The Robin Hood coaster where you run through the... I don't know. We sure win Forrest. I don't know. I don't think that Abu Dhabi wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor. They probably do not. Anyway, so we wanted to throw that in here. We hadn't talked about it in the original show, and then Disney pulled the rug out from under us.
Abu Dhabi is going to be the seventh park. Some people have actually said this might fall through. But, you know, this is going to be a wait-and-see attitude. So let's wait and see.