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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: podcast@retrowdw.com 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 n

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!

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. 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.

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.

In this episode, we go back to the mid-1980s when Michael Eisner decided to bring The Chautauqua Institution’s blend of enrichment, entertainment, and fun back to Florida with a “uniquely Disney” touch. Originally conceived to be part of Celebration, The Disney Institute opened in February of 1996, offering “Discovery Vacations” where guests could choose from a variety of classes on the topics of Culinary Arts, Design Arts, Entertainment Arts, Environment, Lifestyles, Story Arts, and Sport and Fitness.

Welcome to another episode of the RetroWDW Podcast. We have quite a few things in the works, but we felt it was best to put those aside and focus on a Disney Legend who recently passed, Rolly Crump. If you remember back to 2019, the crew from The Lake Buena Vista Historical Society made the journey to California to meet with Rolly. What was initially planned as a quick Q&A, turned into a multi-hour interview with a film crew to properly document this influential imagineer. For this episode, we are using the audio from our YouTube Live event where we honored and discussed Rolly. Throughout this episode, you will hear from our usual team but also special guests Ryan Ritchey, Jeff Heimbuch, and Michael Crawford. Each guest on this episode has a unique connection and perspective with Rolly, which leads to an amazing bunch of stories and memories. Rolly was one of a kind and the main idea that came out of this was his amazing personality and warmth toward fans of his work. We will never forget Rolly and we hope with this episode, you will get a taste of just how amazing a person he was.

We are heading back into the golden dome which is known as Wonders of Life. Over the months, we have taken you through many different episodes all about Wonders of Life including: Body Wars/Making of Me, the pavilion and sponsorship, the original concept, and finally the heated debate on the Magic Kingdom toll plaza sign. As we continue into this amazing pavilion, this episode we decided to take a deep dive into the classic show, Cranium Command. We could not have done this episode or concluded with Wonders of Life without involving some guest stars. This is a huge deal and we are super excited to welcome @bunny_wars and @DreamFinderGuy. Brian welcomes our two guests into the episode and we get a brief history of their EPCOT love, Wonders of Life experiences, and also how they are preserving the history of Wonders of Life. As we get started, make sure as you listen you check out the Wonders of Life Archive. Bunny and DFG have an amazing passion for the pavilion and also Cranium Command. They have spent hours upon hours digging up old resources, history, and tons more. You are going to really enjoy everything they have to offer throughout this episode. As a duo, Bunny & DFG get us started by going through the preshow of Cranium Command. We get to hear all about this attraction from their vast archive, which includes cast member interviews and pulling facts from old documents in their archive. The history of Cranium Command is very interesting in how it changed throughout its development. DFG does a great job explaining how the versions changed when exchanging hands between Disney and Colossal Pictures, which is very interesting. We also get into scripts and movie format of the show that was never made. Wonders of Life had many of the attractions tucked away, Cranium Command was no different as the pavilion tried to promote discovery. As you look at the history of this show, the entryway did change over the years to draw people in. We continue on throughout the show, going nearly line by line and scene by scene. The celebrity connection on Cranium Command was one of the most beloved parts and we dig into each of those. Cranium Command is such an amazing show experience, which makes this episode nearly two hours. Bunny & DFG have been amazing throughout all of this, offering us facts and info that none of us have heard before. Make sure you listen to this one twice; the details are immense and you are going to want to take notes for your next viewing of the attraction. We hope you have enjoyed this visit back to Wonders of Life and throughout this journey inside Cranium Command. 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year again, and the RetroWDW crew is here with another festive holiday episode. Brian takes up back to the Walt Disney World in the early 1990s when the seasonal festivities shifted their focus from the Magic Kingdom to EPCOT Center. He tells us about Epcot’s much beloved “Lights of Winter” musical light show and its European origins, as well as other early holiday offerings at the park. Then we make a stop at each of the monorail resorts and finally the Disney Marketplace and Pleasure Island. From chestnuts roasting on an open fire to electrical boat shows, the 1990s made WDW visitors’ seasons bright.