The Lowdown on the Plus-up - A Theme Park Podcast

An opening day attraction in both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, Mr. Toad is surprising fan favorite given that it plays like an outtake of a film that not that many people have seen and ends in punishment.We love it.Join us for an exploration of the ride that started Claude Coats' theme park career: Mr. Toad's Wild Ride!Thanks for listening!We'd love it if you would give us a c

It's one of the quirkiest theme park attractions of all time. Disneyland, for the first time ever, took on pure science fiction and hit it out of the park. It was like riding through an episode of "Outer Limits" or "Twilight Zone" (and was notably influenced by "Twilight Zone" writer Richard Matheson) and was unique in its effective simplicity and brilliance of design.Join us as we

Another amuse-bouche one between the big shows.Let us know if you like these.And review us on your podcast platform of choice, please. We'd really appreciate it.Thanks for listening!We'd love it if you would give us a cheeky little review on your podcast platform of choice. They're really helpful.Come visit our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1511094196139406 or d

It was a small park in rural San Jose with off-the-shelf rides and entertainment liberally lifted from Disneyland; so why is it so beloved? Is there another regional theme park in the country that has yearly reunions four DECADES after it closed? What was the magic behind Frontier Village?Playland at the Beach, The San Francisco Opera, Fantasia, Puppetoons and two very interesting

It exists in a nexus between three time periods: the future, the retro-future and the nostalgic past. The Main Street Electrical Parade is the most famous Disney parks parade for a good reason, it somehow synthesizes everything that is contained in Walt's original park - fantasy, history, progress - in a joyous and timeless spectacle.And Walt Disney was long gone before it was conc

If you take a left turn around 1929, you end up here: where the jazz band triumphed over the orchestra, where sexy usurped formal, where a very different theme park empire began, and died.Welcome to Fleischer Land. Keep an eye out for hidden Bettys!Thanks for listening!We'd love it if you would give us a cheeky little review on your podcast platform of choice. They're really helpfu

When we pick up a fake gun and shoot it at a fantastical electric target, what are we trying to become? What do we think Frontierland is? Who is Paul MacGlashan and how did the guy that designed Disney's shooting galleries help win WWII? And, most importantly, How did Kelly and Pete find themselves so mired in the kind of Disney current affair news that they usually avoid like the

Fire up your Flux Capacitors, people, because we're heading back, back, back in time!We're traveling to the early-20th Century to visit some houses that ought not spin the way they do, the '60s to visit that same Not-Really-A-World's-Fair that we keep yammering on about and, of course, the '80s - where Huey Lewis lives.It's the ride that saved Universal Theme Parks, Back to the Fut

We go out on a limb this episode by philosophizing about the uses and abuses of guest interactivity within theme parks and other forms of live entertainment. We get real philosophical and voices get kind of contemplatively husky (or Kelly is still getting over a cold).Along the way we visit Knotts Berry Farm, the Galactic Starcruiser, Evermore, live murder mysteries and Renaissance

A puzzling anomaly today - we dive for hours on packed highways to a place where we pay money to simulate driving on packed highways - the Richfield Autopia attraction was once a vision of an America poised on the brink of progress and possibility.Kelly and Pete go on a pilgrimage to Disneyland to consider its history in person and meet legendary Imagineer Bob Gurr along the way!It