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Starport75 - A Disney Podcast

A podcast (mostly) about Disney, Walt Disney World, Disneyland and anything Mickey Mouse, news, history, tips, and we sometimes nerd out on anything--tech, photography, cars, books, music, etc. Join the fun!
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Starport75 - A Disney Podcast
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Now displaying: 2019
Dec 17, 2019
  • Released on 12/16/19
  • Happy Holidays!
  • Thoughts about Disney+
    • Surpassed 10 million subscribers on the first day; projected 10-18 million during the first year
    • What’s missing that we want?
    • "The Mandalorian"
    • "The Imagineering Story"
    • “The Simpsons” display ratio
    • Change made to Han/Greedo scene in Star Wars A New Hope - George Lucas’s change?
  • WDW getting new monorails?
  • Construction
    • Demo of Communicore West in Epcot
    • The new Epcot guide map lists opening dates
    • Removal of accents on the PeopleMover track in the Magic Kingdom
    • Tron track is completed
  • Guests climb on stage during Disney's Carousel of Progress
  • Disney's Bob Iger named Time's businessperson of the year
  • Opening of “Rise of the Resistance” at Disney’s Hollywood Studios
  • Glenn made final payment for the February Disney Cruise
Nov 11, 2019
Oct 24, 2019
  • Do you like Pumpkin Spice flavored items?
  • Starbucks and Joffrey’s in the parks
    • The joy of coffee mugs
    • Having to reinforce shelves
  • Merchandise and the WDW 50th birthday
  • Another visit to Epcot by Chris!
    • Epcot Experience
    • Food and Wine Festival
    • New Frozen Coke booth where the Cool Wash was by Test Track and new Donut Box vendor
    • Instagram photos
    • No viewing of Epcot Forever yet
  • Disney Skyliner
    • We discuss the incident opening week
    • It’s open again
  • New Epcot merchandise
Oct 9, 2019
  • Released 10/8/19
  • Happy Birthday to WDW and Epcot!
  • Chris’ last visit to Illuminations: Reflections of Earth on 9/29/19
  • Mostly spoiler free discussion about Epcot Forever which started on 10/1
  • Opening of the Skyliner on 9/29
  • Disney ending some live entertainment acts because of low attendance
  • Glenn rants on the direction that Disney is taking
  • Epcot Experience Center in the Odyssey opened on 10/1
Sep 12, 2019
  • Released 9/11/19
  • Chris’ trip to Epcot
    • Last trip before the closing of Club Cool and the Future World Fountain
    • Played Remy's Ratatouille Hide & Squeak Game
  • Glenn’s family drove to Orlando to visit Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge during opening weekend
    • Met up with Chris
    • Our tour through the land
    • Our thoughts about the land
Sep 8, 2019
  • Released 9/7/19
    • Mickey’s Runaway Train - display of ride vehicle
    • Star Wars Hotel
    • Tron Lightcycle Run - display of ride vehicle
    • Cirque du Soleil - new show premiers on 4/17/20
    • No new nighttime parade at the MK
    • Disney Cruise Line: the next ship will be named the “Wish"
    • Epcot
      • New logo for Epcot!!!
      • Future World is eliminated and World Celebration, World Discovery and World Nature replace it
      • A new pavilion at World Celebration will be the home base for Epcot’s signature festivals
      • The new Journey of Water, Inspired by “Moana”
      • Spaceship Earth will be “transformed"
      • The Land pavilion’s new film “Awesome Planet”
      • New Mary Poppins attraction in the UK
      • Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure will open in 2020
      • A new “Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along” in January 2020 in France
      • The film “Canada Far and Wide in Circle-Vision 360” will debut in January 2020
      • In the China pavilion, “Wondrous China” will have a seamless 360 degree format
      • A new nighttime spectacular called “HarmonioUS" will debut in 2020
      • You’ll be able to visualize these exciting plans for Epcot when doors open Oct. 1, 2019, for Walt Disney Imagineering presents the Epcot Experience in the Odyssey Events Pavilion
      • No new pavilion announced for World Showcase (Brazil)
Aug 9, 2019
  • Released 8/9/19
  • Glenn’s Houston Trip Report
    • Johnson Space Center
      • Restored Mission Control
      • Apollo 17 Commond Module
      • Shuttle carrier aircraft
    • Astros game
    • Tour of Minute Maid Park
Jul 15, 2019
  • Released 7/15/19
  • Tropical Storm Barry
  • News
    • Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance opening dates announced
    • Disney Skyliner will open next month
    • Monorail Improvements - Monorail Silver
    • Gran Destino Tower at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort opened this week
    • Tomorrowland Marquee sign taken down; will be replaced
    • New water bottle refill stations installed at Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe
    • Liberty Inn Restaurant at the American Adventure is closed; will reopen as a BBQ restaurant
    • The Rainbow Tunnel from Journey Into Imagination will return in the Odyssey later this year
    • Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Series Coming to Disney+
Jul 8, 2019
 
Glenn’s Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dizwiz/albums
Chris’ Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/digichrome64/albums
Jun 29, 2019
  • Released 6/28/19
  • Musings about Instagram and Disney updates on IG
  • Toy Story 4
  • Chris’ Magic Kingdom trip report
Jun 16, 2019
  • Released 6/16/19
  • Rumor: New Brazil pavilion at Epcot
    • Carnival parade like Tapestry of Nations at Epcot???
  • Disney Skyliner - testing
    • State of the monorail
  • Leave a Legacy is being removed
  • Tron construction has gone vertical
    • redecorating Tomorrowland
  • New DCL ships will have home port at Port Canaveral
  • D23 Convention - Parks and Resorts presentation on 8/25
  • Opening of Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland on 5/31
    • Limited to resort guests until 6/23
    • Chris isn’t too excited for it right now
    • Build your own lightsaber
    • Blue milk and Green milk
    • Galaxy’s Edge soundtrack 
    • WDW’s Galaxy Edge is opening on 8/29
Apr 16, 2019
Mar 21, 2019
Mar 14, 2019
  • Released on 3/13/19
  • Chris visits Epcot during the last weekend of the International’s Festival of the Arts
    • Favorite Epcot Festival
    • Chris attended “The Art of Disney Fonts, Lettering & Signage” by Richard Terpstra
    • Disney Princess Half Marathon; lots of traffic
    • Adventures with PhotoPass
    • Guardians of the Galaxy Roller Coaster show building
    • Odyssey Pavilion - flat and no character is beautiful!
    • Family Play Zone
    • Riding different attractions
    • Festival of the Arts merchandise
Feb 18, 2019
  • Released 2/18/19
  • Opened one year after Epcot on 10/1/83
  • Sponsored by General Electric for the first 10 years
  • The one pavilion that combined all of the themes of Epcot Center together: technology, transportation, communication, food, health, energy, living in future habitats on the land, undersea and in space
  • Unofficially, it was seen by GE and Disney as a sequel to the Carousel of Progress
    • The characters have grown up and moved out
    • When proposing ideas for New Tomorrowland in Disneyland in 1990, Imagineering prepared a proposal to essentially combine CoP and Horizons
    • The show’s theaters would present the concept of the “great, big beautiful tomorrow” starting with “Looking Back at Tomorrow” from the Horizons pavilion at EPCOT Center and continuing through an “1890s Victorian style American living room;” “the kitchen of a 1940s modern home;” “a vacation villa circa 1990;” “an undersea research station;” “a space station orbiting the Earth;” and conclude with the “urban habitat…desert habitat…and space scene” from Horizons. http://auction.howardlowery.com/Bidding.taf?_function=detail&Auction_uid1=5322846
  • Design
    • 1979 was a look at the history of technology and a large exhibit space for GE of today and tomorrow
    • Jack Welch became chairman of GE and he didn’t think the pavilion was futuristic enough
    • The name changed in 1980 to “Century 3” and the design was changed to focus on living in the future with technology
    • GE signed for sponsorship in October 1980 and changed the name again to “Futureprobe”
    • The building was designed to look like a spaceship
      • The rear of the building was “show ready” to be seen from the proposed LVB Monorail
    • By the groundbreaking in February 1982, the pavilion was named Horizons
  • Ride
    • Guests would load in a transport terminal of the future
    • guests would board a car that seated four people and faced left of forward motion
    • The ride started by looking back at dreams of the future over the centuries
      • Included looks at Jules Verne’s idea of a flight to the moon
      • A future look at Paris from 1920s
      • “Easy living” with the robot butler, which was the ‘80s as seen from the ‘30s
      • looking back at tomorrow with movies and television specials of yesteryear
      • The future from the ‘50s where the future was “kinda fun”
    • Then head into bringing our dreams to life: “If we can dream it, we can do it” - the transition between past and future. Two Omnimax theaters that showed images of the space shuttle liftoff, landsat photography of earth, microprocessor, crystals for use in microelectronics, liquid space (underwater), DNA chain, the sun
    • 21st Century living - An “achievable Future” of 2086 (When Disneyland opened, Tomorrowland represented the future in the year 1986)
      • Meet the narrators at their futuristic home
        • Dad is playing a futuristic piano
        • Mom is chatting with her daughter on a holophone
      • Head to the agricultural engineer daughter’s home on the farm in the desert
        • The daughter is overseeing the harvest of l’orange (half lime, half orange)
        • Head into the house where her husband and son making a birthday cake
        • then to the den where the daughter is talking to her boyfriend who is working on his submarine
      • Then go to the maintenance bay where the boyfriend is working on the submarine
      • Continue on to the underwater city where children are getting ready to go deep sea diving
      • Then head to space where we see a space colony where the son and his family live
        • A family just arriving from the shuttle
        • Crystals growing in space
        • Join the family in singing birthday to the grandson via hologram
      • Then it’s time to head back home: you got to vote on the flight path back to FuturePort
        • Space: Omega Centauri
        • Land: Mesa Verde
        • Sea: Sea Castle Resort
  • Additional history
    • Closed in December 1994
    • Reopened in December 1995 because Universe of Energy and World of Motion were both closed
    • Closed permanently on 1/9/99, 20 years ago
Feb 8, 2019
  • Released 2/8/19
  • Chris can’t hear the WDW Railroad trains anymore!
  • Disney News
    • Maleficent Dragon Float returns to the Festival of Fantasy Parade from her “Malefi-Fire” last May
    • Fixes to Splash Mountain come in wake of the maintenance list on WDWNT.com; are they related?
    • Elimination of plastic bags in the parks, and new, reusable bags are now available for purchase
    • Testing has started for the Disney Skyliner Gondolas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGUsuKLFZGY
    • Guardians of the Galaxy Roller Coaster ride building is MASSIVE
    • Change in policy: FastPass Reservations Will Be Deleted Upon Walt Disney World Resort Hotel Reservation Cancelation to Stop Guest Abuse
    • Disney says streaming is now it’s number one priority
  • Picks of the week
Jan 25, 2019
  • Opened January 15, 1975
  • Was the first Space Mountain to open, although it was originally planed for Disneyland as "Space Port”
    • Designing started in 1964, but Space Port was stopped because of Disney’s death
    • It was revived because of the popularity of WDW with teens and young adults; the Magic Kingdom needed a thrill ride
  • Disney Artist John Hench drew the original concept art of the SM exterior
  • It was Walt who wanted the roller coaster to be in the dark so he could have precise control of the lighting and to project images on the interior walls.
  • Selling RCA on an attraction to spend $10 million sponsoring the attraction was key to the project
    • In the book “The Disney Mountains” author Jason Surrell writes about Marty Sklar’s efforts to sell the idea to RCA
      • Disney had an agreement with RCA in 1970 to do all the infrastructure communications for WDW
      • The contract stipulated that if Disney could come up with an attraction RCA would be willing to spend $10 million dollars
      • The original pitch was a new version of Mission to Mars that took people inside a computer
      • The meeting with the RCA CEO, Robert Sarnoff went horribly. Sarnoff sat at the head of a long conference table, and couldn’t hear the presentation and couldn’t see the materials. He asked his staff “who are these guys?"
      • That’s when Marty and John Hench regrouped and moved forward with the Space Mountain plans
      • The pitch for SM, Sklar brought Card Walker, Disney’s CEO to the meeting, as he and Sarnoff knew each other. They also insisted that Sarnoff sit in the middle of the table so he could see and hear.
      • The story for the SM presentation focused on communication, as RCA had pulled out of the computer business shortly after the first presentation. The attraction would still consist of a rocket ride through space, but guests would see RCA satellites orbiting in space and after the ride, guests would visit the Home of Future Living which showed off the latest RCA home entertainment products, and some future products, and the last thing guest would see before exiting was themselves on color TV
  • RCA approved the sponsorship, and the project started
    • The project was lead by John Hench and Marty Sklar, and George McGinnis and Claude Coats - of pirates of the Caribbean and haunted mansion fame— were on the team
    • Former astronaut Gordon Cooper, commander of Mercury 9 and Gemini 5, became a member of the Disney team and provided personal consultation to help insure the authenticity of Space Mountain.
  • The roller coaster was developed by Arrow (who built the Matterhorn) and Disney
    • It’s made up of 2 tracks: Alpha (to the left) and Omega. Alpha is 3,196 feet long while Omega is 10 feet shorter.
    • Top speed is between 28 - 35 mph
    • Ride duration 2 minutes, 30 seconds
    • It’s a pure gravity ride with no boosters or retarders; there are only braking zones. If the ride stops, the brakes are simply released and the trains coast back to the station
    • There are 30 trains (15 for each side), with two cars per train, with 3 people per car (although originally, the cars sat 4 people per car; this was changed in 1989)
  • The exit was the Home of Future Living from 1975 - 1985 and pretty much included everything that was presented to RCA during the pitch meeting:
    • featured the theme song "Here's to the Future"
    • Guests stepped onto the Goodyear Speedramp and went past scenes of the Home of Future Living (from Widen Your World)
      • Started outside on the patio with the father on a lounge chair looking at a briefcase size TV screen on a business video call
      • Then, inside the rooms were a series of white hexagonal modules with white, yellow, orange, and brown decor
      • First, the nursery where a toy clown held a camera pointed at the baby; the camera signal was sent to the other screens so the family could monitor the baby
      • Next, the family room shows the grandmother taking a two way TV pottery lesson
      • Then, the Rec room, where a teenage boy took in some snow skiing on a SelectaVision simulator while the younger brother assembled a model rocket via televised instructions
      • Back outside, a boy is at the front door, talking to the mother inside via camera
      • Again inside, the kitchen shows the mother and a neighbor sitting in front of a large TV wall unit reviewing an online catalog system, along with a picture in picture of the boy at the door
      • Then, the teenage daughter’s bedroom watching a SelectaVision videodisc movie on a large screen
      • Finally, was the entertainment center where a young girl and boy watched a football game on a wall-sized screen
      • Then, you travelled under the train tracks on the speed ramp until you reached the incline and the TVs where you could see yourself
  • In 1985, it was changed to RYCA-1 which showed what life might be like living in a space colony on another planet; the sets are pretty much the same as they are today. They were changed to reflect sending packages across spatial distances using teleportation when FedEx took over sponsorship in 1994. And during the 2009 refurbishment, it was changed to the current design of Starport 75 and promoting different destinations around the universe to which Space Mountain's rockets could take them
  • FedEx added TVs to the waiting area inside and played SMTV which had news clips from around the galaxy
  • Sponsors: RCA: 1975-1993 (19); FedEx: 1994 - 2004 (11); sponsorless: 2005 - now (14)
Jan 18, 2019
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