Episode 273 - Mouse Ears or Devil Horns??

People ask me all the time do you hate Disney and I have to laugh and tell them that the reality is................ Yes, Yes I do.

In this episode we tell you why the House that Mouse built is the one place I have no desire to visit again.  Love to get your comments on our reasons.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to the 125 Roller Coaster Challenge, Trimden Staple Podcast. I'm Paul. And guys, this is a uh, I guess a um listener's uh question that I figured let's turn into a podcast here. If you're looking at the title, it's called uh Mouse Ears or Devil Horns, because I got a comment the other day, like, it doesn't seem like you really like Disney, and I'm like, well, duh. Uh so I figured, you know what? I'm gonna lay the rest. I'm gonna tell you the issues I have with Disney. And uh you can agree or disagree, and we will love any comments you have there. And uh with that being said, real quick before we start, uh, if you would like to reach out to us and give us some uh comments, uh, you can always reach out on Spotify, um, Apple Podcasts, stuff like that. We check that every once in a while. But if you really, really, really want to get in touch with us, the best way to do it is to go to our YouTube channel, of course. If you listen to us on YouTube, we answer every comment that comes through: positive, negative, indifferent, whatever the comment is, we are going to answer that. But you can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Tickety Talk. Um, with Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, we check that every day comments. And uh just like what we do with the YouTube channel, we will respond right away there. And before we get started there, we are on our way to get to 10,000 subscribers on YouTube. We're at 76,000, 7700 right now. By the time you're listening to this, it's been fluctuating because our season's kicking off. So uh make sure you um give us a subscribe if you like what we do. Uh, it doesn't cost you anything. Uh, we don't do uh you know a lot of different things there. However, if uh you like a little bit more access, we do have our memberships now for$1.99. Exclusive videos, uh exclusive shorts, um, exclusive chats and polls and stuff like that. So, with that out all out of the way, do I or do I not like Disney? Well, I'm not a fan, and I have my reasons. So, first of all, let me tell you about my Disney experiences. All right. Now, when I'm talking about Disney, I'm talking about uh the Magic Kingdom, uh Disney World, not land. Uh, I was out in California two years ago. Uh, I decided to go to Knottsbury, I went to Six Flags, did not go to Disneyland, so I have no opinion on Disneyland. Um, Janine is an expert on Disney, and she says Disneyland is Walt's park, so much better than Roy's Park over there at the Disney World. So my experiences were all Disney World, and I did hit all four of their gates: uh Animal Kingdom, Epcot, uh, Magic Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios. So I've been to all those parks. Now, my first experience, I had one when I was a kid, eight, nine years old, and you know, I went with my uncle, had a good time, didn't really know much about it. So my real first experience was going with Janine. And when you go with Janine, Janine is a Disney adult. Uh, you know, she uh, you know, she's got the Mickey ears, she got all that stuff there. So it was good going with Janine uh because I learned a lot. She knew how to navigate the system. And back when we went there, it was before COVID. So the key is I saw what the parks were. I saw the fast pass system, really liked the fast pass system. Uh, we stayed at the Coronado Inn. So we were on the property, we were familiar with the shuttles. Um, back then you could do the park hopper with no additional charges, so you were able to jump to different parks. And Janine had it mapped out perfectly. Simple as that. Janine knows what she's doing. She is a Disney person, she understood that. There'll be times that we would have something scheduled for the fast pass at five o'clock. Say it's Big Thunder Mountain. At two o'clock, we walk by Big Thunder Mountain, realize, hey, there's not a big line, let's just jump in a regular line. She would switch out our fast pass for another one quick. It was a good system. And I had the meal plan. So all of a sudden I'm I'm having lobster over at Epcot Center on the meal plan. It was an affordable, um, you know, it wasn't cheap. It wasn't Six Flags, it wasn't Cedar Fair, it wasn't, you know, that kind of end there. But it was an affordable thing for two young adults to actually go. Well, I guess not, I'm not very young, but to go and enjoy. I think we were there for five days, maybe six days. It was affordable. It I actually left that trip thinking I now understand Disney. You know, we were able to navigate, we got on all the rides we wanted to, we were able to do so much, and it was really good. We fantastic trip. But the problem is, if I didn't have that trip, I don't know if I would have as much disdain for a lack of a better word, about Disney if I didn't see what it was. You know, we took the Magic Express, so we didn't have to rent a car. We were able to go right from the Orlando airport, go right uh to our Coronado Inn, get dropped off at the end of it, get on the coronado, go back to the airport, didn't have to rent a car, you know. So it was just before COVID. Then COVID hit, and now here is the problems I have with Disney. And like I said, if you're a Disney adult, you can beat me up all you want there. I'm gonna stand by what I say. There's no disclaimer. Um, I'm not here to coddle. I'm telling you why. I there's three or four coasters now that I need at Disney World, and I still have no desire to go to Disney World. I have really none. So um, so I went again with uh Janine, Kylie, and myself. And that time, that second time we stayed over at the I think it was the art of animation, which yet again wasn't the coronado. It was, you know, more on the budget, I think they call it, uh the economy as opposed to the mid-tier with coronado. Um, we were able, this was still before COVID, but we were starting to notice a change. Uh first thing that called me, we just talked about it, the magical express was gone. Um, so now all of a sudden you would have to pay to go. And of course, then we decided, okay, you know what? We want a little bit of freedom. I want to take Kylie to uh SeaWorld. So I was like, okay, you know what? I'll rent a car. Well, our first trip there, if we rented a car, but we were staying at the Coronado Inn, it would have been free parking. Well, they eliminated that. So now Disney got rid of the Magic Express, Magical Express, forcing you to rent a car basically, uh, or pay for um, you know, the service that was free before. Um, but now if you rent a car, now you have to pay for the car. Uh, you're not just a rental, you gotta pay for parking. So, okay, that's a little bit weird there. Uh, the meal plan was gone or phasing out. It wasn't as lucrative as it was. We were still able to do the passes back and forth. Now, this was before COVID. So these changes, some of these changes were occurring even before COVID. I think COVID sped it all up. Uh, we still had the time, had the fast pass. We were able to utilize it. Uh, we did Epcot, I think we did Magic Kingdom. Those were the two we did. We didn't go to um Animal Kingdom, we didn't go to um the uh uh Hollywood Studios. So we didn't go to those two uh with Kylie. We just went to those and we had a good trip. But like Kylie said, oh, Epcot isn't really educational, it's basically different gift shops for the different countries. A keen exploration there. Uh if you're not drinking around the world, it's not as much fun. But then COVID hit. And once COVID hit, that gave Disney the license to rip it all apart. So, yet again, starting from the beginning, starting to the end. I'll give you 10 reasons right now why not a fan of Disney anymore. Yet again, I'm gonna lump in number one, Magical Express gone, gotta pay for parking. So when you rent a car, you gotta pay for that. Number two, let's just get it out there. Genie Plus, Disney Genie, horrible system, horrible system, unless you want to dump money. It's a money grab, guys. It is a money grab. So instead of getting two or three or four fast passes, now you gotta wake up at six o'clock in the morning, you gotta pay extra money to see if you can get a uh pass and get on the ride, or you're on the standby. And the way they do it, let's be honest, if you're in the Disney genie line, they're emptying that. You're lucky if you're in the standby line, the the regular person's line, you are gonna be taking forever if you even get on the ride, because they're gonna keep on giving it to the fast passes and maybe give you one or two seats per ride. Um horrible system for normal people. If you want to open up your pocketbook, boom, you got you got the purse. I understand it's about money, money, you know, making money and stuff like that. That's why Six Flags has a FastPass, uh, Flash Pass at one point, and FastPass on Cedar Fair, and you know, everybody has them. But the way this Disney system works is they want you to be on your phone the entire time. That's number three. The days that you can just leave your phone in the hotel and escape and have a Disney vacation are gone. You need your phone for everything. Uh, just to you know, to do a reservation, to pay, the whole nine yards, um, to get access and all that stuff. Everything you got there is now pretty much you need to be on your phone. They want you on that Disney app. All right. So that's number three, Disney app. Number four, let's talk about what they're doing to the parks. Um, people are talking about Walcott for the longest time, how they're basically putting the wall together around Epcot and you couldn't see anything until you got to like uh the big um, you know, spaceship Earth. Well, that's gone now. And now they walled up the Magic Kingdom. Now, with that being said, we're gonna go four and five here. Yeah, it's a construction site now, but the rides, the attractions, what they're putting in is a downgrade. Before Disney was known for innovation, all right? They were known for having the first, you know, tubular steel coaster, you know. Um, and now Walcott, I mean Epcot is now when they released everything, it it's generic. There's nothing about that new entrance, the Epcot, that's imaginative, that's interactive. I mean, yeah, they had the statue of Walt, but the the Fountains, uh, the lights, you know, at one point when they first opened it up, the lights were breaking because people were walking on it because it's a pathway, and it was breaking. And now you've got rid of you, you walled off the um uh over by Big Thunder, and you walled off, you know, there to basically drain Tom Sawyer's island and um you know the Liberty Bell, that whole area there, and you're putting in a ride that most people are like, yeah, we're riding once or twice, the cars ride. Well, you already have it in um over at Disneyland, you know, you're you're you're taking out how do you explain this? When you go to a park, you want a nice mixture of nature and human. You know, uh, you know, when I go to Great Adventure, there's parts right up there against the pond. You're at Cedar Point, you're basically jet out right into the middle. You know, you can go to the boat docks, you can walk along the beach if you want to. Uh, most parks have a park aspect. And Walt understood this, and Roy understood this. And that's why in the back of the park, by you know, the uh the 1776 section there, you can go to your right and go to the Haunted Mansion and have that kind of experience. Or you go to your left and now you're in the pioneer, the western section there with Big Thunder Railroad and all that, and uh back then Splash Mountain. And you had water in between there with the Liberty Bell, which you know tied into the U.S. theme and stuff like that, and Tom Sawyer's Island, which goes back to Americana, and you kind of had separation. Well, when you put in this generic cars ride, what the hell does cars have to do with Pioneer? What does it have to do with the Haunted Mansion? What does it have to do with um America, you know, with the founding of America, with the Hall of Presidents and stuff? It's so out of place. And you drained the natural beauty of Tom Sawyer's Island. Yes, I know it wasn't a major attraction. I never went on Tom Sawyer's Island, but it wasn't for me. But it was something that gave you that separation between the the themes and the land. I mean, now you're gonna go right from um the cars ride right into the haunted mansion. Well, what does that have to do with it? There's no separation there. You're gonna go right from the cars ride to the U.S., which they're trying to kill that anyway, the Americana section. Big thunder. It has nothing to do with any of those themes. And the worst part about it was beyond there, where they're gonna put the villain's world or whatever it is, they could have just put it back there. There's no reason to get rid of Tom Sawyer's Island and kill the natural beauty. So that's number five. Number six, they brought back the dining pass, but it's not the same. There's more limitations on what you can get. Uh the menus are, you know, it's harder to get reservations because you gotta go through the app and all that kind of stuff there. You really can't just walk into a restaurant anymore. You gotta have an appointment, yet again, going back to the app. Um, they're really killing that aspect there. Um, and it's sad what they're doing there. Very sad. Uh how they're forcing people to look at their phones, uh, like I said before, and go where they are. Um, I mean, going from park to park, I mean, I know this is kind of haphazard, that's kind of how I do these, but Magic Kingdom, you're you're killing Tom Sawyers, you're putting in a ride that nobody wants, and right now, for the next two or three years, it's going to be a construction site. You go over to Epcot, the front was not a grand, grand thing there. Um, the rides that they're putting in in the Epcot aren't really drawing people there. You're eliminating a lot of the education section. The only positive with Epcot right now is Guardians of the Galaxy, which really, if you think about it, shouldn't even be an Epcot. The original thing was the experimental prototype City of Tomorrow. What does Guardians of the Galaxy have to do except, hey, we have this IP, let's make some money. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a coaster guy, but really doesn't belong there. Uh, when you go to Hollywood studios, you kill the Muppet area. People are so upset about losing the Muppet area. Yet again, not the most popular area, but it was something there that was drawing people. And then the Star Wars section is half-ass, very poorly done. The attractions are not bringing people there. They did their whole uh, you know, special um hotel experience there that flopped massively. I think it's office um office stuff now. The only positive I do see is you took the Muppets and you're putting on the Aerosmith ride, the rock and roller coaster. I don't know what they're gonna call it, um, because it's not really roller coaster anymore, unless you have an MO, NMO. But all in all, there, I give you that, that you're keeping that, and you did have to freshen it up. I do remember walking there and looking at the uh animatronics for um Aerosmith and be like, Steven Tyler doesn't look like that anymore, right? Uh and then last but not least, the Animal Kingdom. That one they haven't really screwed up. That one they're doing pretty good with. But all in all, why do I hate Disney? It's a money grab. They don't want me anymore. They don't want middle class America anymore. They're living off the legacy of Walt, but they don't respect what Walt did. Walt went in there and wanted to create something that the average American family could enjoy. They can come there, you know, where am I going? I'm going to Disney World, and that's a part of people's childhood. It wasn't part of mine, but it was part of a lot of people's childhood. And they're taking the memories of that and they're playing it forward. You know, they don't want it's not affordable. If I go with a family of four to Disney World to go to Magic Kingdom, I'm dropping$2,000 a day if I want to be able to have those experiences of, hey, I want to do it all in one day. Because if not, you're in a standby line and you might be waiting two, two and a half hours to get on Peter Pan. They're forcing you to pay extra. And it's not like the gate's cheap. I love their pricing. You know, for as low as$89. Yeah, two days out of the year. The rest of the time it's$120. You know, they have two days, a Tuesday, and uh different times that uh would actually work. But the reality is it's not affordable anymore. Uh the attractions are half-assed. They have no, their their imagined tiering is all going down the street. Uh, number seven, you can't keep up with Universal. You knew Universal Epic Universe was coming, and you did nothing. You did nothing to compete with it. You thought that you could live off your name. You can't. You can't live off your name because the kids nowadays are not growing up on Disney. They're not, they're not. They're watching Cartoon Network, they're watching Nickelodeon, they're watching um Bluey and stuff like that. Nobody's Mickey Mouse cartoons, nobody knows them anymore. My generation didn't know them. Yes, you had that resurgence with Pixar, but you bought Pixar, but I give you that. You got Pixar, you got Star Wars, you got that, but it's only going to take you so far. So I know it's a little bit of a haphazard of an episode, but if you think I don't like Disney, you're 100% right. The if you're looking for Disney content, go somewhere else. I'm here to talk about amusement parks, theme parks that actually want my business. So I will be going to Universal this year. I will be checking out Epic Universe, I will be checking out um adventure, and I've never been to Universal Studios. I'm gonna put my money there. When I'm in Orlando, I'll go to Universal, I'll go to SeaWorld. SeaWorld's got great attractions, it it hasn't lost its soul. Yes, they don't have as many animal exhibits and shows, but they still are all about conservation. Universal is bringing it and they are stomping Disney like a narc at a biker rally, uh, like Dennis Miller says. It is brutal. I prove me wrong. Come into you know, leave me some comments, tell me why you think Disney is better or is even worth the money anymore. Um, besides nostalgia. You know, what attraction besides Guardians? I mean, you think Tron? Who knows Tron? Who knows Tron? I I I'm 52 and I don't care about Tron. And I was there in the 80s when Tron happened. Tron bringing back Tron 40 years after the original movie to put it on a license for a roller coaster? Seriously, what are you thinking? The new movies are flopping, nobody cares about Tron. So I just don't understand Disney. They prove me wrong, like I said, and the funny thing about it is they are doubling down on what they're doing with the parks by bringing in Josh DeMaro as a new CEO. Don't get me wrong, the last guy sucked, he was horrible. But Josh DeMaro, he's killing the parks, and now you're gonna reward him, you know. Disney's just frustrating. So this is gonna be the last time I talk about that cesspool of Disney. Uh, and I feel bad for Walt because it's called Disney after his name, and Walt wouldn't even want this. Walt will look at the movies and be like, where the hell's the creativity? Why are you buying Marvel? Why don't you create something? You know, when was the last time they had the original idea? I mean, Pixar throw some stuff out there every once in a while, but we got Toy Story 39. You've got um, you know, Zootopia 44. You know, they've got no new ideas, they're dead on the creative side, their parks are falling apart, their parks are not being updated, they're killing the memories of Magic Kingdom. You know, you don't now sit down while somebody's going to the bathroom and look out at beautiful Tom Sawyer's Island. Now you're looking at a wall, and then when the wall comes down, you'll be looking at these stupid little car rides going by. Oh, it's really interactive, it's really fun. Yeah, okay. Maybe once or twice I'll ride it. It's basically a wacky worm, all right? Let's be honest here. Um, like I said, this is the last time I'm talking about Disney, but you know what? People like Disney. Tell me why. Tell me why I'm wrong. Tell me, no, no, no. Genie Plus is so much better than the FastPass system where you didn't have to pay extra money. You know, oh no, no, no. The food, the dining plan is fantastic now. It sucked before. Tell me one area where Disney actually improved on their product. I'd love to hear it. I'd love for you to be able to give me a cohesive act argument, not well, you just hate Disney. Yeah, I do. Why? Because they're not giving me reason to like them. Anything that was good about when I went in 2018, I think it was, is gone. It's gone. It's all money grab. Magical Express, gone. Parking, no longer free, park hopping, you gotta know somebody to go, and it's only these hours, and oh, we're gonna cut that off there. If you're a Local person with your season pass, they don't want you. You got the season pass, they don't want you. They give you blackout dates, and when you walk in, they kind of give you a stare. Because they want the rich upper close crust people, the people that are making, you know,$200,000 a year to go there with their kids and dump$10,000 on a week. They don't want the season pass, guys, because they can't monetize them. And even the people that are, you know, the Disney shows and stuff like that are half-ass. It prove me wrong. Give me some examples. Because at this point, the Disney difference is it's sending me to Universal. It's sending me to SeaWorld. It's sending me to Six Flags. All right. Once again, guys, I'm done talking about Disney. Never going to talk about that Cesspool again. You guys let me know why Disney's great. And uh can't wait to see you in the queue, not at Disney and all the other parks in twenty twenty seven.