62.5 - Below Thunder's Deck with Parker Rabe

Welcome back to another episode and this time, we have a special guest for this ‘half episode’, Foxx Nolte. Foxx has been in the Disney community for years and has been a trailblazer in all things Disney history. For this episode, we are excited to have the ‘Queen of Lake Buena Vista’ joining us to talk all about her latest book, Hidden History of Walt Disney World. This book is filled with a treasure trove of tales and stories curated by Foxx, which were hand-picked and organized in an entertaining way. Todd and the fellas touch a bit on an earlier episode where we got into the old stories told to us about Bay Lake & the various watercraft duties. Check out Episode 8 if you haven’t already! One of the main discussion points that Foxx brings up, is the 44,000 word limit in this book. As she states, she had to ‘cut the crap’, which makes this a very fun read that comes in somewhat short snippets. You get the information, you digest it, and you keep going without going too far into the weeds. If you remember, Foxx also wrote Boundless Realms a few years back. Her sense of history and record keeping is right in line with how most of us think; this history has to be documented and recorded before it is forgotten or lost. We love that and hope she continues to record these stories and memories before it is too late. We get into one story in particular, all about a packing house. During the construction of Walt Disney World, they utilized a closed-down packing house to build ride pieces and set items. Foxx dug deep into this little bit of history, getting down to the type of windows in each building, shed designs, and when these places were shut down. One big issue she has run into is the history is murky due to so many people moving in and out of the area. This book also hits on the old ticket system, which allowed Disney to see which rides drew in the crowds and allowed you to adjust the maintenance schedules based on use. Another fun chapter is all about McDonald’s in the parks, which if you don’t remember when this was a thing, you need to get into this bit of Disney history as it was a magical time. Overall, this was such a fun read and a fun interview. We hope you take some time to pick up a copy and enjoy it the next time you are traveling to WDW, heading on a summer road trip, or even sitting by your favorite resort pool. Huge thanks to Foxx Nolte for sharing copies with all of us and for spending time with us on this episode.

For the main topic this month, we head back to Pleasure Island for more fun and excitement. This is Part IV and if you haven’t enjoyed Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3, we highly recommend you take a listen back as these were recorded years ago!  How gives us a little recap of how each episode went in the past. The story on this episode though is changes. How gets us into each club and how they changed after a few years, including themes and names. These include Cage, The Wildhorse Saloon, 8-Trax, Planet Hollywood, Motion, Fulton’s Crab House, BET Club and more. We go through our memories of each of the various iterations and also what we thought of them over the years. The interesting aspect we get into here with Pleasure Island is that it evolved frequently and for the most part, was done to keep people attending and trying to find that club that hit. This episode also has us reflecting on fads of the era from Wine Coolers, The Chicken Dance, Zima, Planet Hollywood, and line dancing. Even though this area has come and gone, we discuss where it went and how it went out. Many of us have memories of the big changes in the end and we even discuss the unused concept of Hyperion Wharf. Pleasure Island was a fun concept that worked in many areas and did not work in others. How has promised us a Part V episode about Pleasure Island, so make sure you message him if you are interested in hearing even more history on ‘PI’. Thanks for listening!

For Episode 88, we are ready to Ride the Movies! Universal Studios in the late 80s brought their A-Game to central Florida and Back to the Future: The Ride was one of their top attractions.  For this episode, we solely focus on Back to the Future and go from start to finish, from development to closing. How is our lead this month and for all of us having experienced this, the movie quotes are plentiful and the ride experiences come from all directions. We initially get into why this ride came to be and how it was somewhat of a mess to start. The entire ride system was pretty groundbreaking for the time, really capturing all of us as parkgoers. Before you get too far into this though, if you have not seen Back to the Future, we recommend you pause the episode and check it out. We go through the entire facility, the pre-show, and even the ride mechanics. The neat part about this ride is many people have documented it over the years, including the BTTF Bluray’s that include the ride in a somewhat remastered format. The ride was so timeless in that you really felt as though you were stepping into the movies which we all know and loved. As How guides us through the spacetime continuum, we are given tons of descriptive visuals and walkthroughs about the entire ride.  For reference, we touch on the Back to the Future Visual Guide, which has a full history on this ride as well. As we wrap up this episode, let us know your thoughts on the ‘Good Neighbors’ episodes and if you would like us to branch out more often. While this won’t be done regularly, we are always interested in the history of Central Florida and all the fun tourist spots in the area. Thanks so much for listening!

This mini-episode is a compliment to our 2022 holiday episode.  We promised we'd eventually track down the fellow responsible for bringing the Lights of Winter to EPCOT Center.  Brian and Todd talk to Jim Heffelfinger whose 20 year career with Walt Disney World began as stage manager at the Hoop Dee Doo Musical Review at Pioneer Hall (where he met and shares a great story about our friend Billy Flanigan). Over the next two decades he worked with Disney Legend Ron Logan and the rest of the entertainment team to bring Christmas as we know it to EPCOT, Fantasmic to Florida, the Muppets to Hollywood Boulevard, the holidays and a parade to Animal Kingdom and the Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights to Disney-MGM Studios. Some of his shows, like Beauty & The Beast Live on Stage are still running today much as he designed them while others are very fondly remembered. This is a fun interview where you’ll learn a lot and, of course, we ask him for memories of Ron Logan and Dick Nunis and invite him to a future RetroMagic event. Jim Heffelfinger is an unsung hero of holidays in Walt Disney World and many beloved live shows. Enjoy the interview.

Welcome to Episode 87 of the RetroWDW Podcast: Hungry For Hollywood - We appreciate your support and hope you have been enjoying each and every episode. Be sure to check out some of our previous shows from over the years. We have visited multiple parks, resorts, and just about everything else in between. Listener Mail We open the mailbag monthly and are ready to hear from you. Be sure to reach out with questions, stories, memories, and more. You never know if your letter will be read on a future episode: [email protected] Our first letter is from Mike and he is curious about a particular stairway at Magic Kingdom. We need some experts out there to help Mike out with this stairway and what happened to it.... Amy is our next letter and she is a new listener, welcome! Amy gives us some great information about working at The Disney Institute and how she was able to take courses for free as an employee. Thanks for the fun stories Amy. Another Amy, another letter. This Amy is talking about Episode 32 which was all about Universe of Energy. She gives us some information on the dinosaur song we spoke of, which can be heard here. Enjoy! Sylvia is up next and she is curious as to what happened with the Cigar Store Indians from Magic Kingdom. We give some insight into those and where they might have ended up. She also wanted to know where this photo was taken... Thanks for your letter Sylvia! Emily is the next note we received, she was showing off her Dreamfinder Watch, which you can still get for yourself or as a gift. Visit our LBV History page for more information. Paula wrote in with another vintage family photo taken on Main Street. We have been collecting these gems where you dress up and it looks old timey. Thanks Paula! Finally, our last letter is from Donna and she speaks about the Room with a Skew and how her son loved playing in there. Donna is a former Gold Key Member along with Todd and she has some fighting words for Brian, which leads to a little history about The Pretzel Belt. Who knew? Main Topic Buckle up because we are going back to Hollywood, well the way it was in your memories, but never was. Brian is leading us through the early years of food and drink at the Disney-MGM Studios. One of the last great theme parks on Disney property and one that always has fascinating stories coming to us about the opening days and how things were drastically different when compared to now.  We get to go through the different eateries that existed in the early years, including the Hollywood Brown Derby. How as very disappointed that it wasn't in the shape of a derby hat. We also discuss the Echo Lake restaurants, highlighting that the Fifties Primetime Cafe and the Hollywood and Vine cafeteria share a kitchen. The team discussed the unique dining experience offered at these restaurants and the challenges faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our handy Birnbaum's guide is utilized throughout the episode, as is our good friend Reimund Pitz, who you may remember joined us during RetroMagic 50. Take a trip with us and Reimund around the Disney-MGM Studios, discussing each restaurant and how each menu has been changed over the years. We lost a ton of great options over the years and we even get a little history along the way about why some of these changes have happened. We hope you enjoy! RetroMagic Updates We are so glad so many of you could make it to our most recent event all about EPCOT Center and the 40 year anniversary. The videos from the event will be posted to our YouTube channel soon, but please take a minute to listen/watch our live recap we did a few weeks ago. Enjoy! Click Here To View RetroWDW Film Archive To make sure you are the first to know when items are released, subscribe to us on YouTube. Be sure to click the notification bell too, that way you are alerted when we post.  Finally, be sure to check out Vimeo if that is your thing, as we will post there as well. RetroWDW Merchandise Post-Show Fun Join us next time for another amazing episode of the RetroWDW Podcast! Read for another movie night? Subscribe on YouTube & hit that notification bell so you are ready. Check out SpectroRadio for all their WDW music, including Throwback Thursday at 9am. Click Here to donate to the Lake Buena Vista Historical Society and join us on a future episode! Check out our friends at Mouse Adventure to see where you can join them next on a super fun adventure: Mouse Adventure

We take you back to an attraction and for our fans that wanted us to go way back, we are going way back. The Mickey Mouse Revue which opened October 1, 1971 last about nine years closing in the fall of 1980. How is leading us this month which only means one thing: we are going super deep into this topic. He begins by going over the homophone of Revue vs. Review and also how little is out there on the Mickey Mouse Revue. This attraction was located where the current Mickey’s PhilharMagic is playing each day, so you can get a feeling as to how this played and where it was in the 70s. Throughout this episode, we walk you through the history and how the show plays out from start to finish. We recommend you watch the following video, just so you can get a visual of this attraction. How also gets us into how the attraction felt, which I appreciated very much because many of us have not seen this one in person. The voice of Mickey is discussed from this episode and it is not one of the better versions… This quirky and unique show has lots of small details and stories that really make it unique. As we dig into the history of this one you are really going to be blown away as to how this whole thing played out. Finally, we get into what happened after the doors closed in 1980 and where the entire thing ended up, with some recent updates! We hope you enjoy this look back at this unique attraction.

So our last episode, Episode 84: Disney Vacation Club, we dug into the history of the vacation club and the original resort. Throughout this episode, we were able to discuss our personal experiences with DVC and also our opinions. While going over all of the details in Episode 84, we asked for your feedback and your own opinions on DVC. You as the listeners did not disappoint! We had an amazing response and received tons of great messages. Throughout episode 84.5, we dig into all of these messages. As we state at the start of the episodes, we received numerous emails with varying levels of detail. All of us especially liked the amount of detail in some of these that broke down facts, figures, and even the needs of your family. While these slowly trickled in over the month, we felt the need to bring them all to a ‘mini-episode’ which ends up running just about two hours. If you are a DVC member, a prospective member, someone who rents points, or even a WDW vacationer who has no interest in DVC, this episode will speak to all of you. We thank all of our listeners who decided to write in and give us their experiences, you made this episode possible. Join us next time as we get back into the theme parks and bring you another episode real soon!

Welcome to Episode 84 of the RetroWDW Podcast Episode 83.5 - Tammy Tuckey - We appreciate your support and hope you have been enjoying each and every episode. Be sure to check out some of our previous shows from over the years. We have visited multiple parks, resorts, and just about everything else in between. Main Topic For episode 83.5, we have a special guest joining us and we are so excited. Tammy Tuckey who has joined us in the past for numerous events and happenings is on the show to discuss her new album, Glowing in Timeless Places. If you need a refresher, Tammy joined us during RetroMagic with Ali Olmo back in 2019. They entertained us all with a great duet of Two Brothers, which is from The American Adventure. Be sure to enjoy this amazing performance after the episode ends. Tammy was able to join us once again, but this time at RetroMagic 50. How ran a great panel with George Wilkins and Tammy, which was absolutely perfect. Tammy was able to sing classic Disney World songs while George gave tons of backstories and information. Again, be sure to take this one in after the show. Before we get into Tammy's new album, she released 'You'll Find Me on Main Street' back in 2018. Another amazing album filled with great Disney songs, all sung by our talented guest. Tammy joins us for this episode to do our usual discussions and also catch up with what she's been working on since RetroMagic 50. Her new Album, Glowing in Timeless Places was recently released and features 11 amazing songs from Walt Disney World. What is great about this episode of our Podcast is you get some behind-the-scenes information about the various songs while getting to hear parts of the new album as we go along. We also get into various cover albums Disney has released over the years, which you no doubt have heard before. There were some that were released though that we really had no idea existed. This episode is a ton of fun and a good change of pace from what we normally do. Instead of hearing us go on and on, the songs are intertwined into our discussions with our special guest. Huge thanks goes out to Tammy Tuckey for joining us and for sharing her amazing talents with us and our listeners. Be sure to check out her website for more information: www.tammytuckey.com

For our main topic, we take you back to the late 80s and early 90s and get into the history of the Disney Vacation Club. We all know what the vacation club is nowadays, but how did it start, and why? In this era of Walt Disney World, things were much different, and the concept of a timeshare at Disney World seemed impossible. Disney decided to change this and tackled the concept of taking ownership in their properties. The Disney Vacation Club Resort was the original, changing names to Old Key West as it is called now. To kick this one off, we get into some personal stories about timeshares, how people get picked to purchase, some of the trickery that has occurred over the years, and more. As we move along, the episode discusses what Old Key West was upon opening. How actually spent some time there in the early years, describing how different it was compared to now. Take a look at this video from May of 1992. If you look at Old Key West on an aerial view, you can really take in what they were going for back then. The resort is basically built around the golf course and it sits on the Sassagoula River, which makes the entire feel of the resort unique at the time of the build. We discuss how this one feels when you compare it to the newer properties, where Old Key West is very much more like a community and less of a resort type of thing. Finally, we get into what went wrong for them at the start, running into development problems and where they went from there as a company. DVC is still going strong but it has changed to what it is now. The perks back then were much better and they slowly have chipped away at what made DVC an interesting proposition back in 1992. Either way, this portion of Disney history and how this adds to the WDW property is an interesting one. We all have stayed at DVC properties but none of us are members. What is it like being an official Disney Vacation Club member? Have you found it to be a good value? Do you regret the purchase? We would love to hear from you and what this has done for you and your family. Thanks so much for listening and we hope you have enjoyed this look at the early years of DVC.