Ep. 739: Mary Blair, Season of the Force, Knott's Bear-y Tales
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You're listening to Mousetalgia for the week of Monday, April 28, 2025. Hang on to them hats and glasses, because this here is the wildest podcast in the wilderness. This is Mousetalgia. Carpe Kingdom, seize the magic.

Welcome to Nostalgia, your podcast about Disneyland, Disney history, and living the Disney life. I am Jeff, your host for this week, along with my friend Julia. Julia, thanks for stopping by. Thanks for having me, Jeff.

Sure, no problem. And of course you're here because you have just returned from an eventful trip to Disneyland, as have I. Not the same trip, different trips, but we both have recently returned, so we're going to talk about that a little bit. It does happen to be season of the fourth. Star Wars is in the air. It's closing in on May 4th. I probably won't have...

a May 4th episode, so this will have to suffice. We'll get a little Star Wars in there this week. We're also going to talk a little bit about the Walt Disney Family Museum. We're going to talk a little bit about Knott's Berry Farm. Lots of good stuff coming up for you this episode. But as always, let me thank my sponsor, MEI Mouse Fan Travel. So Mouse Fan Travel is a fee-free Disney travel agency, and they can take care of any kind of Disney touring or trip that you want. In fact, we are currently in the process of using Mouse Fan Travel to book a...

crews for next year. So I use them. What?

Potential. Potential. So I use Mouse Fan Travel. Everyone on the podcast did. Becky was an agent for Mouse Fan Travel. They can really help you out. So they're experts at what they do. Right. So go to mousefantravel.com. Get yourself a no obligation quote and see what they can do for you. All right. You know, before we dive into the meat of the show, let's go back to the charcuterie. So let's have a charcuterie. All right.

The Mousetalgia Charcuterie. And let's keep it simple. What are you watching these days? What should people be watching? Let's do that. So I'll let you kick us off, Julia. What have you been watching lately? Well, what I've been watching is not Disney related, so... You have no Disney related watching going on? Nothing? Well, I guess...

So I am a child of the 90s. I'm not a product of the 90s, but I grew up in the 90s. And several of my TGIF mainstays have rewatch podcasts. So I've been doing a lot of rewatching Boy Meets World, Step by Step, and Full House, which were all on ABC. Okay, that's so close. Yeah.

But in the 90s, I mean, I guess it was Disney in the 90s. They all have Disney World episodes. I'm telling you. That's what I've been spending a lot of my time on lately. That's pretty vague. So when did Disney acquire ABC? It was after that, right? It was during the run of those shows in the 90s. So yeah, they talk about working for Disney on the show. Still too vague for me. Still too vague? Yeah, let's get a little closer. What about?

I have a newfound love for Bluey. All right. Well, everyone, I agree with you. Everyone should be watching Bluey. So talk about that. Why? Why do you have a newfound love, though? Oh, because there's a child in your. Is it because of that?

No, she's I'm still not allowed to watch too much TV with her yet. She's too little. It will happen. But I just wanted to see what it's about because people seem to love Bluey and I totally get it. First of all, it's like the perfect length of I just want to watch something, but I don't want to spend too much time watching something. It's like nine minute episodes, maybe less.

The humor is good for everybody. The voice acting is great. Like, it's just an enjoyable... It's enjoyable.

Yeah, Bluey really is for everyone. My daughters both got Bluey hoodies for Christmas and they wear their matching blue hoodies. My daughter is a senior in high school. Do they both have Bluey? Are they both Bluey or is one bingo? No, they're both Bluey, I think, because, you know, they couldn't decide. But they don't go to the same school, so it doesn't really matter. My daughter is in high school. She's a senior graduating and she unabashedly wears that Bluey hoodie to school. I love it.

My stepson Nathaniel, just the only thing, like the only thing that he watches that just cracks him up, like uproariously cracks him up. We will just hear him just start laughing out in his bedroom when we know, oh, he must be watching Bluey on his phone or something because he's just...

And, you know, it's good for adults in terms of, like, if you're a parent, especially, like, boy, can you relate to it? But even if you're not, it's just so dry and innocent. It's just, you know, like, there is an un-really-tapped...

need for dry innocent humor in this country and so far bluey is pretty much the main yeah especially in kids entertainment yeah because i'm not gonna sit here and say all of it's great because i think a lot of it is not in the stand age yeah

That's fair. Yeah, a lot of it is not great. But all of Bluey is wonderful, right? So yeah, check that out. If you're like, oh, it's a kid's show. Yeah, it is a kid's show. But it fills a need. And it's hard to explain. Here's an honest review. My mom, who thought she was over the days of watching kids' stuff, right? We put on an episode because my sister's boyfriend has three children.

So she has seen Bluey before I did. And we were all together one day and we were just kind of deciding what we were going to watch. And we had a few minutes and I was like, why don't we watch an episode of Bluey? Heard good things about it. And my sister Katie was like, oh, it's great. And I was like, I don't want to watch a cartoon. Let's watch Bluey.

Just put on the news or something. We're like, we're absolutely not putting the news on. We put on the first episode of Bluey and she laughed throughout the entire thing. I was like, there you go. Yeah. So Bluey. Okay, Julia, that's a good call. So it took a little bit of a winding road to get there, but you found it. But if any of you listening are TGIF listeners,

go find these podcasts, these rewatch podcasts. They're great. Yeah, okay. That's fair. I'm going to tell you something to watch. I mean, everything... I always bring it back to my collections here, and it's going to happen again. But if you are a...

a fan of Disney collectibles. No, not Star Wars, Disney collectibles and Disney antiques. You might recall a story that I told you about, I don't know, a couple months ago that I bought a Saludos Amigos poster for my wife. And I think it was her birthday present last year or Christmas last year. It's been a while we've had it. I think it was Christmas. Yeah, a year ago Christmas. And then this last year at the end of the year, we had it finally released.

linen backed about, I think I started that process maybe five months ago. It took the, took the guy a quite a bit of time to get to it. Is that, is that because he has so many others he's working on? Like you were just that far back in the queue? It is a busy guy. Yeah. I don't know if that's entirely why or not, but he's, he's a busy guy. So at any rate, Chris, I think his name is, what's his name? Chris Coltier, Coltier, I think.

He has a company called Poster Fix. They're located in Brooklyn and they restore antique posters. And he finally made a video of my poster being restored. It didn't really take much to restore my poster. It was really in pretty good shape and it really didn't have much problems. But what he did was make this cool video of my poster and another poster. And the other poster is a Disney shorts poster. Uh,

And my poster is the Saludos Amigos poster from Mexico. And so he put those two posters, like the restoration process together into one video. And it's really fascinating actually to watch this. It's kind of like watching Bob Ross in a sense, because you're watching an expert and there's a little bit of the repeating process of painting and just craftsmanship. ♪

A few days have passed and I'm going to prepare the poster to receive the paper fills. I want to burnish and sand the edges to make sure that there's no bumps and then I'm going to go into it with paper pulp, which is acid-free paper powder mixed with methyl cellulose, and use that as a paper fill.

So if you go to YouTube and look for the Poster Fix channel, it's just Poster Fix, all one word. You can also look for... He called the video Restoring Two Walt Disney Cartoon Posters from the 60s, is what he called the video. But it's really fascinating to watch them restore this torn up... So my poster was in pretty good shape. The other poster that they're restoring is torn into four or five different pieces, and it's really...

coming apart and they they show you step by step every single part of the process of linen backing and then cleaning and then restoring these both of these posters and it's about 25 minutes long the he tells the whole story of Walt Disney Animation in that 25 minutes in a really

a really well done way for like if you haven't been paying attention to nostalgia for a while and you don't really feel like you have a grip on the history of the walt disney animation studio this 25 minute talk pretty much covers the whole thing yeah yeah it's pretty amazing at how well he does that

And he's been restoring posters for over 40 years. So it's just kind of a, it's he and his wife. His wife does the fine art, like the restoration of the artwork. And he does the paper restoration and the mounting. And I just, it was like, I saw it come out a couple of weeks ago.

And then, you know, I kind of was going to watch it and never did. And then I came back to it a week ago and there have been 295,000 views of this video. Wow. So, and it's kind of amazing because most of his videos are,

You'll get a couple hundred views or sometimes a few thousand views. But I think it's maybe because it says Disney. I haven't mentioned it. Maybe it's because it says Disney on it or something. I'm not really sure. But 295,000 views. And it's really fun to read what people say. Like people have a great admiration for the old Disney animation. And also just his videos have a way of they're kind of...

What's the word? Cathartic, I guess. So it's worth a view. So go to YouTube and look for Poster Fix. And then you'll find it from about a month ago. And you can't miss it because there's a big torn up

Disney shorts poster on the preview panel. All right, so that's my Thing to watch also, I guess we're both gonna watch something this weekend It is it is Star Wars week coming up next weekend right is our next week is going to be Star Wars Day May the 4th we're gonna talk about Season of the force at Disneyland in a few minutes here, but we are both not together again, but I

we are both going to see the 20th anniversary screening of Revenge of the Sith. So they are playing, it's in the theater, I think for more than the weekend. I think it's a limited release, but I think it's playing all. Definitely the weekend, yeah. But yeah, take a look. I would be surprised if it's not playing through Star Wars Day. That seems odd, right? Seems to make sense, right? And it's my absolute pleasure to welcome you all to this very special screening celebrating the 20th anniversary of Star Wars Revenge

So you might still have a chance to see this depending on when I get this show out. But you might still have a chance to go see...

of the Sith on the big screen. And it's been 20 years since I've seen it on the big screen. But since then, they've invented this thing called D-Box. So we bought D-Box tickets. Oh, are you going in D-Box? Nice. Yeah. So I've never seen any old school Star Wars in D-Box. Was it originally released in D-Box? Like what exactly? No, there was no D-Box 20 years ago. 20 years ago. So what exactly do they... Or wait, was there? Do? I don't know. I've never been to a D-Box.

Just brand new 20 years ago, but Star Wars didn't come out in D-Box. The new Star Wars did. Do they do anything special to the movie or is it just it enhances your viewing? No, no, yeah. It just is programmed along with the movie. So yeah, D-Box never, as far as I know, never changes how the movies are created. Okay. Yeah.

So that's coming your way if you're interested. Star Wars is out there in the movie theaters right now. And of course, Andor started this week too. So, and I do, are you an Andor? I haven't watched it yet. Like I. Did you watch the other season? No, I haven't watched any of it. So I plan on watching it. I just, you know, finding that precious time to do it. Well. You're going to be disappointed in me. I did start the accolade. I didn't finish it though. You don't like it.

It was all right. I mean, it was Star Wars. So I like Star Wars stories. The villain was kind of weird. Like it didn't, he wore, you know, Star Wars villains wear masks. So there's a Star Wars villain with a mask. But it wasn't really. I'm sure we could go on a tangent of that. So let's keep going. So let's not. Yeah. But anyway, Andor is out there this week. So just started. And so, yeah, you might have a chance still to go see Star Wars Revenge of the Sith. Yeah.

All right. So thank you, Julia, for joining me for that extended charcuterie. And now let's move on to our feature presentation. All right. Here you leave today to hear a podcast from the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy. Nostalgia. Carpe The Magic.

Let's start by talking about some things that are coming up, right? So I don't, Mousetalgia has not traditionally been a news podcast. I remember we used to always try to be very clear that we're not a news podcast. Yeah.

But then we would try to kind of cover things in a timely fashion. And since, you know, I'm doing my nostalgia a little bit less frequently now, I think sometimes if it strikes me, I might start sharing some news and probably mostly about the Walt Disney Family Museum. Yeah. And we're also in a good...

Like this time frame is good to be sharing the things that we're going to share today. Yeah, I think so, too. So let's talk about the latest thing coming to the Walt Disney Family Museum in the end of May. I think May 22 is when it officially opens. And that is called Mary Blair Mid-Century Magic. So the Walt Disney Family Museum is heading back to the Mary Blair unending, never ending well of history.

goodness and public relations. So Mary Blair, and they, and what they have subtitled this is a new retrospective of the visionary artists celebrated contributions to Disney animation, attraction design, and American modern art. So they're trying to, even though this is a very, very small exhibition, they're trying to expand it into a little bit further into attraction design and

And then some of Mary Blair's post-Disney career art. A little bit, maybe more so than they did with the giant John Canemaker, Mary Blair art. What was it? The art and flair of Mary Blair that Mousalga was a small part of? Mousalga.

Well, Alice, we know you've had such a long, both you and Mark, such a long and wonderful career with the Disney company. But I think one of the things our listeners don't know, a lot of people don't know, is about the great friendship that you and Mary Blair had for so many years, you and Mark both with her. Can you tell us a little bit about how you first heard about Mary Blair and how you met her? My mother was an art teacher. And she saw some of Mary Blair's first things. And she

She brought them home and showed them to me. And she said, this is a true artist. This is beautiful work and so forth. And so we started following, trying to see what was being done at the studio that Mary Blair was doing.

So then when Mark and I got married, he said, I have two people I want you to meet when we go to New York, and I'm not going to tell you who it is. So I said, thanks. So we went, and the first one was somebody in Long Island. Mm-hmm.

And it was this wonderful house. The front of it was glass looking out over a pond and big tall trees and rolling hills. And it was a glass, all glass entrance into the house. And at one side of the door was a tray with a pitcher full of martinis and two martini glasses and a ribbon.

And when we came in, we were supposed to follow the ribbon. We followed the ribbon, which went all the way through to the kitchen. And in the kitchen was a candle. And she always put a martini in the window and a candle in the refrigerator for guests coming. That's cute.

Which was marvelous. And so that's how I met her. And I couldn't believe I was stumbling over things going to the kitchen because I couldn't get over seeing Mary Blair. I knew I was going on. It's Mary Blair. It's Mary Blair. And...

She was absolutely delightful, and there wasn't anything that she couldn't do. She was an absolutely marvelous cook. Her studio was all glass, and in the snow country, everybody thought it was strange, but she loved it. Yeah. Wow. And they used to go ice skating on the pond, and her husband had a small sailboat, and they used to go sailing. They were barbecuing everything else. They were outside...

People, they were misplaced Californians. She was a joy and a delight to know. And she was a fashion plate always. And she could get something in the 5 and 10 cent store and dress it up and put it on, and she'd look like she was ready to walk down Fifth Avenue. Wow. She was always neat as a pin, looked marvelous. Scoundrel.

And that's another story for another time. Also in the archives. Also in the archives. If you need it now. Yeah. But I did think I would talk to you for a minute about this. So it opens pretty soon. It's a showcase of Mary Blair's artwork in a new way. And they call it a reimagined, let's see, how do they say it? A reimagined return of a fan favorite original special exhibition that debuted in 2014. Yeah.

Oh, Magic Color Flare is what it was called. Magic Color Flare, The World of Mary Blair. So this exhibition is curated by the museum's director of collections and exhibitions, Marina Villar-Delgado. And it's based on the original exhibition that John Canemaker curated. But it's...

It's a little bit different. So mid-century magic presents a fresh look at Blair's inspirational career with an expanded selection of works that highlight her later collaborations with Walt on iconic theme park and resort installations, including attractions, facades, and murals. So, um,

Of course, the museum's director, Kirsten Komorowski, says, And, you know, the museum itself has tons of Mary Blair artwork in there, just in their permanent collection.

There's all sorts of Mary Blair artwork. I have a stupid question for you. Does it say the location in the museum? Like, is it going to be in the special exhibition hall? Well, you know where it's going to be, right? Is it going to be downstairs? Yeah, it's downstairs. So I don't think they...

Intent to use that special exhibition hall for exhibitions in the immediate future. Yeah, because it looks like they are having it available for rent again. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's more of an event space now. But they are able to do some pretty interesting things down there in that space. It's like a miniature gallery, basically. Yeah.

a one, a single room gallery. And then they're going to expand it of course, into the, the downstairs hall also. So there'll be in the theater lobby. And then in that small gallery room, they'll have some things. Let's see. I'm going to read a little bit more. It says Mary Blair mid-century magic will feature nearly 150 artworks and historical photographs, exploring her influential role and shaping the look and feel of many of Disney's animated films and theme park experiences.

And artistic vision that continues to resonate today. Guests will also have the opportunity to dive deeper into the exhibition experience with hands-on Mary Blair themed art activities or using their phones to unlock augmented reality interactives. So that's part of how they can shrink these things. They can expand it digitally and virtually so that, you know, I...

We'll have to see. Like, we haven't been able to see, of course, it's quite a ways off yet, so there haven't been any previews or anything of the exhibition. As long as there's a reasonable revelatory, maybe, you know, maybe things that we haven't seen a lot of in terms of actual artwork in the exhibition, then I'm happy to have it also be available.

alternatively also a kind of a virtual tour. So that could be interesting, right? So what do you think? You must have been thinking about this before now. What's your opinion of this?

I'm excited. I mean, the Directing at Disney exhibition was very cool. And you're right. They can do really interesting things with the space they have down there. It's not a large space by any means, but they can really make it super interactive and engaging, which is very cool. So that's really all you could ask for. In fact, I personally probably prefer a smaller exhibit because...

I will get overwhelmed trying to take it all in otherwise, you know? Yeah. So I'm excited to see what they do. But I do want to mention, and I'm just going to move us along here a little bit. There is a special opportunity for D23 members. Tell us about it.

So on May 21st, so the day before the exhibition is opening or the exhibit is opening, D23 is having a special preview of the exhibit.

And a tea, right? Yes. Like a tea party? Uh-huh. For gold members, it costs $52 plus a $3 processing fee per ticket. And general members, it's $62 plus a $3 processing fee. And you can... The length of the event is from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., but there are four different hour-long tea times available.

That sounds like golf, but actual like sit down, have a cup of tea. And sandwiches. It's like an afternoon tea. Or it's like a morning tea, I think. It's not a formal tea. It's like when you have finger sandwiches and a little bit of tea. And $50...

It's a little bit much for a tea, but since you get to explore the whole museum, you get to explore the exhibit a day early. And the museum will be closed to the public at this time. So it'll just be D23 members there for this event. Yeah. And you get a little trinket, of course. And that's always the, like, hopefully it's something cooler than a...

Sticker or patch, but who knows? They haven't given out patches for a while. No, they haven't done patches lately. But the event includes a first look at the gallery, a golden afternoon themed tea with light tea sandwiches and treats, private access to the Walt Disney Family Museum, including all of the galleries,

um, access to the museum theater, which will be playing Mary Blair related clips throughout the duration of the event, as well as access to the museum's gift shop from four to six 30. Um, and a special D 23 member event gift. So you can basically buy a ticket. And I believe if you, if your tea time is from four to five, you can stay there until 8. P.M. Um,

I think everyone can stay there from 4 to 8. Yes. But then your tea is one of those hours right in there. Yep. So that sounds pretty good. So want to learn more about D23, go to D23.com. If you want to learn more about the museum, go to WaltDisney.org. The museum is open 10 to 5.30 Thursday through Sunday.

Closed on Mondays. Oh, well, no, in the summer. It's going to be open. It's going to be open on Mondays, right? So that's exciting. It's in the Presidio National Park of San Francisco. Which is beautiful. Yeah, it's a gorgeous place. There's lots to do there, too. So it says that it's free with general admission. So I am not certain if they're going to perhaps...

stop you and check your ticket for this one. I mean, this is probably the most significant exhibition they've hosted downstairs yet to date. So I don't know if they're going to... Because ordinarily you can just walk into the museum and walk down there to use the restroom or the coat check. It's usually not...

you know, a ticketed place, but it does say specifically that it is free with general admission. So hard to say. I have noticed like you can't just walk into the museum anymore. Like there's always either a volunteer or a worker asking, what are you here for? Basically. But I've always said, but I've often said, I just want to go shopping and I'll just let you go shopping. Yeah.

So, you know, I'm not 100% sure. It might be that technically, if you want to shop specifically, you can shop specifically, but you can't just say, oh, I want to explore the lobby. You know, it's probably part of technically a general admission. So anyway, it's totally worth paying for, though. So general admission is $25 for adults, $20 for seniors and students and $15 for youth.

All right. That's all we need to say about that. Let's have a couple minutes, just a couple minutes talking about Season of the Force at Disneyland. So you got to see the special, the new special show, right? Let's just jump into it. You did too, right? Yeah, we both saw that. So let's talk about the new projection show in Galaxy's Edge. It is called Shadows of Memory. Shadows of Memory. A Skywalker saga. Skywalkers.

Smugglers and scoundrels, pirates and rogues, travelers and adventurers. Welcome, my name is Tohan Lej, the Lore Weaver. Tonight, I invite you to join me around the fire of memory for a tale of prophecy.

The story of a destiny fulfilled, a darkened curse, and a final redemption. The legend of a family strong in the force, entwined in a battle between the darkness and the light. Okay, so what did you think?

I thought it was really cool. I thought the projections were really effective. Like they looked, it looked real. Cause like at some points,

I mean, beyond what they were showing for the movies and the people and stuff, but just like the greenery or like the lava, like all of that looked real. Yeah. It's amazing how, because projection mapping is 3D, and if you're projecting something that is the same thing that it's on, it's a pretty amazing thing.

They do the same thing on Main Street. They make pictures of the buildings on the buildings, right? So it doesn't really look like an animation. It looks like they're just putting a spotlight on the building, but then it's coming to life. So same thing here. The mountains of Batuu really come to life with...

and lava and greenery and snow, snow storms. It's really cool. It's really amazing. You know, you would think, oh, it's just a projection show. You know, what about the fireworks? But it really is pretty much cutting edge projection work here. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. I prefer a projection show over a firework show. Well, you know, I kind of see the, the,

and the pluses and the minuses of both either of them. They're very different art forms, but I do feel like the newer, brighter, you know, now that you can project with so many lumens, like that it's so bright on the subject that it almost looks like it's a spotlight on something. Do you know what I mean? As opposed to a projection, that makes it really a different story. Yeah.

And it really has only been the past four or five years that I feel like projection mapping has really come to this place where it looks so real. Yeah. And this is kind of the latest version of that. So it is a really cool story. So, I mean, there's not much to spoil. We could spoil the story, but we won't. I mean, everybody, I'm not going to say everybody, but most people know kind of what happens in the first six episodes. And that's basically what it takes you through in about five.

10 minutes, I would say. You know, it's a kind of a picture of the story of the Skywalker family.

and what it means to the season of the force, right? So it's worth, you know, if you still, I think season of the force is going through the middle of May, right? Or the first week of May. Through May 11th. So there's still time to go see it. Okay. So season of the forces has a little bit of time left. I think also starting, maybe already starting, I'm not sure when this began, but you can make a new special lightsaber hilt kit

I think it's, I don't know if it's continually through the summer. Maybe it is, but there's a new, what's the name? Oh, Asabi's workshop. Yeah. You can make, there's a new lightsaber hilt coming that you can, or a lightsaber theme, I guess, that you can build a hilt from. So that's something new to look forward to. Mostly, I just wanted to mention, did you eat any special Star Wars type food or anything while you were there? So I tried everything.

And I'm not positive this is only part of Season of the Force, but I tried the the Keshian spiced milk tea, which is milk tea, horchata jelly and with caramel sugar crisp. Yeah. It was like it. No. No.

Was it too sweet? It was too sweet. And I had it too late in the day. So it was just, it was a bad idea. That's the classic Disneyland story. It's too sweet. And that's saying a lot coming from me because I have quite the sweet tooth. Yeah.

Yeah. So, okay. Well, I'm glad you mentioned it. Yeah. Before we leave this, before we leave talking about Season of the Forest, I should mention, we should mention how to watch this thing. Yeah. So it is, it is a little bit impacted sometimes. You can get there maybe, maybe even 15 minutes before and still sit right in the front. But I took your advice and got there a half hour before and we were up on the lake.

terrace, like outside of docking base seven. So like that little area that is like looking over the millennium Falcon. Yeah. Um, it was a great vantage point. Yeah. I would say one of the best places, probably the first place I would try if you're, if you can be there within, I don't know, you might have to be there 45 minutes early or even more, but if you can, so if you're staring at the millennium Falcon and you go all the way back until you're against the wall of, um,

Not Docking Bay, but the, I guess, I don't know, the wall of the wall. So that you're looking straight at the mountains over the Millennium Falcon. That's probably one of the best places to see it. You said that's a good place that you were watching from? Yeah, and they have spaces taped off. So once you see that tape on the ground, just pick any one of them and they'll just let you stand there. And so that's how you see it. ♪

You're listening to Nostalgia, Carpe Kingdom. Seize the magic. So for the rest of the show, we're going to talk about Knott's a little bit, Knott's Berry Farm. You know, I was going to bring you a trip report. I actually went to Knott's Berry Farm at the beginning of February and had big plans to bring you a trip report from the beginning, the opening day of Peanut Celebration. So my wife and I packed up, jumped in the car, drove down there for Peanut Celebration and, um,

We were going to, you know, I was really looking forward to this. I haven't been to Knott's Berry Farm in quite a few years. And so it was time for a trip. And we thought this would be a good way to kind of tie in something new and something to report on. So we were heading down for peanut celebration. The unfortunate thing that happened was on the day, the opening day of peanut celebration, Knott's Berry Farm lost power.

And they lost power to a full half of the park. And the park that has all of the attractions and rides shut down. There was almost nothing running. They left Knott's Berry Farm open because, I mean, they had sold tickets, right? So it was an interesting kind of situation. The ghost town side of the park was still powered. So the part of the park that takes the massacres

massive amounts of electricity and power. That part shut down, but the ghost town part, which is mostly stores and shops, that was still open. So it was really an interesting situation. We wanted to talk about the Peanuts shows, the Let's Celebrate show. And they had also a big show, like a rooftop, I guess it was called Snoopy's Rooftop Concert. I wanted to see that.

And none of that was running that day. We did get to see the life and art of Charles M. Schultz in Town Hall, which is an exhibition. And we did get to walk through Pigpen's Pigpen, which is at the library stable. Right. So they had this kind of funny like there's animals and then Pigpen. It was actually quite appropriate and a pretty cool photo op. Yeah.

So, you know, I don't have a lot to talk about. We did, you know, at Knott's they have a bicycling pianist, a piano on a bicycle, which is kind of an interesting, cool thing that they do. And I was wearing a Vince Giraldi t-shirt and the guy saw me and he's like, he pointed at me and he's like, hey. I mean, to be fair, a lot of people were dressed in Peanuts type of regalia that day, but I didn't see very many Vince Giraldi fans. Like that was kind of a unique thing, right? So he stopped.

And he's like, let me perform for you. So he played the Peanuts theme, Linus and Lucy. There we go. There we go. Come on. How are you not dancing? Great shirt, dude. People should be dancing. Yeah.

The best part. I guess dropping your hat counts as dancing. Big finish. Thank you. Thank you.

So that was pretty fun. Um, so we did get, and we get, we did go learn to draw peanuts characters. So they had, um, drawing lessons that you could take, but a lot of the peanuts related things just weren't happening. Right. Or at least some of the bigger tickets. So that was pretty unfortunate. Um,

So I never did my trip report. Didn't really have a full, complete thing to say. Although I will say, um, oh, we did eat a little bit. Um, let's see really the main thing that I'll mention they had, and this is going to sound so ridiculous. Um, PB and J's were uncrustables. They were uncrustable sandwiches and they deep fried them and serve them dipped in boysenberry sauce, I believe. Um,

I think, or maybe it was just strawberries to go with the jam inside. But, you know, if you've been to a county fair before, you know they'll deep fry anything. And deep frying things in batter just tends to make them gooey and yummy. And so this was no change. I think what I was struck by most was the price. Like, they were...

Super inexpensive compared to what Disneyland would have charged for something like this. I don't remember now what it costs. It's been too, too long, but whatever the cost of it was, I remember thinking you wouldn't even, I mean, you got two Uncrustables and I think, and this dipping sauce and every, and it was deep fried and it was, you know, powdered sugar and beautiful and, and something under $10, I believe. So, um, that was kind of impressive, um,

And then we went through Ghost Town. And we've talked about this before. This is what Walt Disney knew as Knott's Berry Farm when he was planning Disneyland, what's now known as the chicken restaurant in the Ghost Town area. And Ghost Town at Knott's Berry Farm is just a one-of-a-kind experience. I can't think of another themed amusement park or something that really feels so entrenched in its era and worldwide.

Right.

parts of the park and and the ghost town can just kind of keep to itself right so it doesn't feel it feels to me like the people who own and run knotsberry farm don't feel the need to incorporate change into the ghost town area so it's uh you know there's still our museum exhibits um still just old turn of the century um antiques on the walls and um almost everything

um block there of of the boardwalk has some kind of um little museum you can walk into and see exhibits from around the turn of the century um that you can still get a horseshoe stamped with your name we got a horseshoe stamped with bam what which is our family motto um and the um

You know, the metalsmith messed around with us, the blacksmith messed around with us. And, you know, it's still a lot of fun. The cast members are different than Disney cast members. They don't have a veneer of manufactured positivity, but they're positive because it's just a very they're very a lot of them are either long timers or they're

They really know what they're doing. So it's just a little bit different in terms of the cast member experience, not in a bad way. You are more likely to get some, I believe, some authentic reactions to situations that Disneyland cast members might be a little too timid to express, which is probably sometimes good, sometimes bad. But

We did enjoy our time at Ghost Town. And it's been, I don't know, more than 10 years since I've walked through Ghost Town. So we did all the Ghost Town stuff. We panned for gold and got our little gold flakes in our little bottle, little souvenir bottle of gold. We, as I mentioned, went to the blacksmith shop and got a horseshoe stamped. We bought a geode. So there's a rock shop. This is probably one of the things that I thought was interesting.

pretty much one of the coolest things for me as a collector. So I started my collecting as a child and what do children collect rocks, shells, stamps, you know, easy things, you know, low, low reach collectibles. And so I collected rocks and, um, I remember my first geode, I still probably have it somewhere and they have a geode shop, a rock shop, but it's kind of, I think most of the effort there is probably into fossil collecting. There are some, um,

Really interesting fossils in there, you know in that 20 minutes or so I spent in there I heard like you can tell people come here for this shop to see what it's all about and There's some people that know a lot about rocks and fossils that come through and they're like wow This is a good deal. But for the most part they say like oh that's not worth that much money That's not worth that. That's not worth that. So it's really interesting to hear people treat it kind of

Like it's not just one of these shops selling, you know, pyrite and quartz crystals by the bag. It's a rock shop and with lots of fossils and geodes all over the place in the front and the front right in front of the shop. They have a big outside, big giant geode cutter, like a big saw that they'll cut your geode open for you right there. So you can pick one out of a pile, hand it to them. They'll cut it open and you see what you get.

You have all kinds of cool stuff in this beautiful Chia. Lots of clear quartz crystals in here with clear banded agate.

and a little bit of dark white. That is so cool. Inside the banding there's a mineral culture point, more shadow like. There's shadows in the banding when you move it around. The shadows move, it's kind of like a holograms type thing. So if you know a tiger's eye with tiger's eyes made up, that shadows are like the holograms type thing. Very cool.

limonitis the brown you see is a fancy word for volcanic mud and the white you see volcanic ash from the volcanic region in northern chile mexico a little bit of black manganese in there very cool that is 65 million there's t-rex teeth the new my newest um one i have want to add to my collection is now a t-rex

Now that that's something I have seen and kind of can appreciate lots of dinosaur fossils. Like it's almost worth going there. If you have a kid that is a huge dinosaur nerd, like it's almost I almost want to say it's worth the trip to Knott's Berry Farm to take them to the rock shop so they can see a lot of real like dinosaur fossils.

Nothing like a museum would have. Like, there's no full skulls or anything, but there's some really impressive samples from the dinosaurs, fossils in there. So anyway...

Oh, and in the back of the geochop, they have signed geodes. Like their hard rock, literally hard rock, literally like the hard rock cafe. Their hard rocks are on the walls signed by famous people. So, or sort of famous people, people that would have been wandering through the rock shop at Knott's Berry Farm. And so a lot of them have done horror movies, which kind of leads me to believe that a lot of them stop by when they're at Halloween Horror Nights or Knott's Scary Farm.

But it's just kind of funny, you know, in the back of the shop, you can see the signed geodes. So Julia did buy a double bubble, which is a geode that's kind of formed into two, but it connect, but it didn't separate. So there's like two geodes in one kind of looks like a figure eight, big giant rock. She

She found one of those that she just couldn't let go of, so we had them cut it open, and it's pretty. It didn't have any... A lot of the geodes won't have the hollow in the middle. Like, you're kind of fortunate if you have a hollowed-out metal. A lot of the times they're solid, but it's usually solid quartz of some type, or lots of... They'll tell you all the different minerals that you see in there. So you still see the light kind of go through the layers of the geode, and so it's pretty...

And it was fun. So that's all the stuff we did at Knott's, I think. Then we had chicken dinner, met my friend Chris Merritt, who you heard a couple weeks ago talking about his new book about Disneyland with Don Hahn. So this was before I had done that interview and

We had chicken dinner and just talked all about, well, just all kinds of stuff. Life. We're friends. So we talked about life. We also talked about his book projects and writing the Disneyland book and some of the stories behind that. And just we also talked a lot about the history of Mott's because you'll remember Mott's

Chris Merritt wrote another Knott's history book, Knott's Preserved. You remember that book he wrote with his co-author, Eric Linksweiler? It went through a number of printings, and then it's, I think it might be out of print now. But Chris is out with a new book all about Knott's Berry Farm, and it's about one attraction, right? And it's called Knott's Berry Tales. And I remember this attraction when I was a kid. One of the first dark rides I really had a big...

memory of writing because it was the main thing we would rush to at Knott's Berry Farm when I went there with my friends. So I was a kid, used to run around Disneyland with my buddies, Christine and Robin from down living near there. But we also would often go to Knott's Berry Farm together and run over to Knott's Berry Tales. So I remember this attraction distinctly.

Of course, Knott's Berry Tales was designed by Rolly Crump after he left Disney. So I talked to Chris a couple weeks ago after I finished talking to him about his Disneyland book. I said, hey, let's talk about your Knott's Berry Tales book. And he said, yeah, sure, great. So because it's for sale right now, you can get it right now at Knott's Berry Farm if you're lucky. Or you can go to fantasy-funwheel.com, fantasy-funwheel.com and pick up a copy there. But it's just a fascinating book. You know, I wrote a book about one attraction, about the Haunted Mansion, which also is

If you read it and go backwards, you can see it's really a history of where Walt Disney Imagineering was at the time, when was at the time that Walt Disney passed away and how they moved forward. So Knott's Fairy Tales is really a story of how the park developed through the ghost town era and moved into the next phase of its existence and put this attraction into place and how that came about and has an introduction by Rolly Crump, one of the last things he did before he passed away. So it's really interesting.

An amazing book. But that's enough for me. Let's talk to Chris and hear all about his new book, Knott's Berry Tales, The Complete History of the Whimsical Attractions.

So up next, we have a very special guest, very familiar to listeners of Nostalgia. Chris Merritt is coming back to the show to talk to us about his new book, Knott's Fairy Tales, The Complete History of the Whimsical Attraction. Chris, thanks for coming back to Nostalgia. Sure. Glad to be here. Thanks. So The Complete History of the Whimsical Attraction does not really do this book justice.

justice i mean it's really the complete history of early knott's berry farm yeah in my you know in my never to be humble opinion and well if your definition of early knott's berry farm is the 70s and 80s then yes but i mean that's what i grew up and you grew up with right so yeah you know um yeah i i it you know it's so funny because it's like you know the book

We can talk about why and how, but the book kept growing and growing. And I remember showing it to Chris Crump, Roley's son. He's one of my dear friends. And he just looks at me and goes, Chris...

Can it just be about fairy tales? And I'm like, no, it can't. Because there's so many other important things to cover. But I would say, you know, that's the misleading cover. Because you look at the cover and you're like, oh, yeah, like it's all about the dark ride and that's it.

But it's really what it's really about is it's for sure it's it's a lot about Rolly Crump and what he did after he left Disney and all these young artists he trained and Knott's Berry Tales is the big culmination of that is as far as I'm concerned, because it was such a mind blowing experience to me as a little kid. One of like those key moments that made me want to be a theme park designer, but also

It's a story of Marion Knott, Walter's youngest daughter, and how in the late 60s, you know, Walter is basically starting to succumb to Parkinson's disease. And the last thing he kind of does is Independence Hall, which the family kind of lets him do, you know,

as kind of a gimme, like it doesn't make any, it's not, it's not a moneymaker. Right. So they're all kind of like, okay, well, you know, dad, dad's in his twilight years and we're going to let him do this thing. But, you know, that's kind of it. So Marion is kind of the only one who really steps up and, you know, and takes over the operation of the ghost town. She encloses the park. She opens the first new land beyond ghost town, calls it Fiesta village, which was a loose conglomeration of, of,

but hurlbut rides and little like petting zoos. And there was a seal pool, if you can believe that at non-smart, right? Yeah. The smell must've been wonderful. And, uh,

And calls it Fiesta Village and does this little Mexican village and it's wonderful because it's celebrating Southern California history, which is great, and goes with the brand. And it's very successful. But she encloses the park and Marian said to me, "Once you enclose the park, you have to keep upping your offerings to get guests to come in to pay."

And so the first thing she does is she goes, well, I'm going to nick this other land at the back. We need to have a theater because the wagon camp is... We can't get big names to come in, especially if there's bad weather. We want to get big names in there, so we need an enclosed theater. And as part of that, we're going to have a whole new land, and we're going to call it the poorly named Gypsy Camp. And I remember asking her, it's such a weird theme, and I just said, Marion, why...

why why gypsy camp like why you know why romany people and she said i don't she said i was searching so hard for a theme i couldn't think of anything that was california and all like i could think of was like when i was a little girl because she grew up on the farm that that romany people would come and park their way you know i mean any place that there is a a

What's the word I'm grasping for? Any place that there is a thing going that is great. So a fair or a popular restaurant or some sort of an event, it's going to draw people. It's almost like the equivalent of you go to a concert and the bootleg t-shirt salesman are outside. It's that. So Romany people are coming and parking their wagons and selling things. And so she remembers that as a little girl. So that's what she thought was appropriate. And the land is just...

It's just – it's the most pathetic thing you've ever seen in your life. It's this – I call the rock work crumpled paper bag rock work because it literally looks like a Ralph's shopping bag that someone crumpled up in the fall and like through – it's just terrible. And so I can talk more about that if you want. But that all – so it's the story of that and really –

Besides the Roaring Twenties and Knott's Berry Tales, it's how Marion grows the park by like almost 50% in about three years. And that's fascinating because she, to my mind, is the first woman theme park creative executive ever. It's like all old guys before. Let me ask you a quick question that's kind of tertiary to all this. Like it's next to this. So the idea of you need to keep adding little things so that people will come back.

I feel like that somewhere, like Disneyland will never be finished, has sort of that sentiment behind it. But somewhere along the line, guests to theme parks have turned a corner to they don't want to discover, they want to reminisce. Like, don't change my park. I want it to stay the same. Do you think Knott's needed...

Like, where is that line where people because like so and then let me step aside even further. So I went through the ghost town, man, that place is like stepping into 1950, like the store and the little blacksmith museums in each store. It's still it's not it's not exactly what it was in the 70s, but it's still very evocative. Like, as you say, yeah, for sure.

So like, when did people decide we don't really need our theme parks? And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe people think they don't want it to change, but they really do. Well, when you, when you say, did people decide, are you talking about guests? Because they don't decide it's the owner operator to decide. I mean, if you're talking about just in terms of like, like what's popular. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure if they, I mean, there certainly are polls, right. You know, they take, you know, they take, you know, they take surveys of like all, a lot of people who have, you know,

They find out what people are planning or they're talking about planning behind the scenes because there's a survey with leading questions. So you would say it's accurate that people actually do go back to parks when there's new stuff. They don't really just want it to stay a museum forever and ever and ever again. You know, it's really hard for me to say because on one hand, I do honestly believe that

you can't calcify and make something a museum forever. Yeah. And I do, you know, there's been a lot of, um, ink spilled or arguments over Walt saying Disneyland will never be finished and using that as an excuse to, to tear out things and put new things in that may or may not be as good as the old things. Um,

I'm not against new things and it's hard for me because I love old things so much. It's, it's hard for me to have an objective viewpoint of that. So like,

If I could like go, you know, up the road and ride adventure through inner space tonight, I would go with bells on and pay any amount of money. Yeah. Um, or if I could go ride the original Knott's fairy tales again, like the original 1975 one that I saw when I was five years old and maybe exploded my mind. And I went back home to kindergarten the next day and did all these drawings of it that I still have, you know, like at five years old. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Um, would either of those things play today? Would those things be popular with it? I don't think so. I don't think those things would fly today. Um, so from that viewpoint, yeah, you've got to change. Yeah.

But I also think there are some really wonderful, almost perfect things. So like, you know, I guess the haunted mansion we were just talking about, like that is a great example. Like, you know, can you imagine them tearing out the haunted mansion and, and, and putting through, I don't know what, you know, whatever, you know what I mean? Like I, like I can't, it's again, I feel that attraction is lightning in a bottle. And, and if there is anything close to a perfect attraction or pirates for that matter, you

you know, those are it. Yeah. I can find flaws in anything. But, but I, I think, you know, if they tore those things out, like, you know, and tried to put something new in that, whatever the current hot IP was everyone how and with good reason. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't know if that answers. Yeah, it does. It was just an aside because I, yeah, I know that you, this is a part of a lot of stories like, well, we needed to add, change the park or we need to change this or change that. Um, so let's, so actually we kind of jumped right in here and a lot, I don't know if a lot of my listeners don't even know what Knott's Berry Tales is. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So can you give us a, like a brief overview? Sure. So, um, brief is, is, is my great challenge, but I'll try. Um, so, um, uh,

And basically what I just talked about before about Marion not growing the park, she has this gypsy camp area at the back of the park. They have a theater, which is the same theater that's there today. It was called the John Wayne Theater then. And she has all this horrible, horrible, crummy rock work. And these basically, I'm going to say, little shops and food and beverage. And they're all Romany gypsy themed. I hesitate to say the word gypsy because that's not what it is. I understand.

And I do put a thing at the front of the book saying that is a slur against Romany people. But I also like I can't tell the story without saying that. So I just say it and I'm going to deal with it. But anyway, but please accept my apology to anyone who is offended by that. So so she does this whole land. And part of the problem with that land is there's there was a big ride that was going to be back there. And at the last minute, they decided not to do it.

The land was really, really dead. And so they try for about three years to really like, you know, get interest up, but no one cares. Like no one's going back other than to go to the theater. No one's going back there. And Marion's like, I got to reconcept and they just think they're going to refresh the whole land and make the same theme.

And she hires a man named Dick Johnson, who was a comptroller at Disneyland and a money guy. And he comes into knots and he works with Marion and he go. And so she goes, well, I want to do this and I want to add this and I want to add rides and I want to add like maybe I don't know. Maybe I want to add a roller coaster behind the mine train. And she goes, and I've always wanted to do a cute little dark ride.

And so this guy, Dick Johnson goes, oh, you want to do a cute little dark ride? I've got the perfect guy for you. And he just left Disney. His name's Rolly Crump.

So this is like 1973ish. And Roley had left Disney. He did Florida. He did It's a Small World for Florida and the Mr. Toad ride for Florida and was very frustrated. One of the big things he was frustrated about with Toad was he wanted to mix black light with incandescent light in a dark ride. And Dick Irvine told him, absolutely not. Dark rides are all black light.

And, you know, just and a million other things, too. But he basically since Walt Disney had died, you know, Roley didn't really have a protector there. And he was always kind of the young punk that they looked at sideways anyway. So so he left and started his own little design firm with Ernie Ball of Ernie Ball Guitar Strings. So if any of you have bought Ernie Ball Guitar Strings, that artwork might look familiar if you know Roley's artwork because that's Roley did it anyway. Right.

So, Roley started this little company and Roley was in Florida, doing the preview center with a bunch of these young kids who he was training for a park that they never realized called Circus World. And so Marion Knott calls him up and goes, hey, we're going to do this little dark ride.

We have some ideas for it. Would you come back out to Knott's Berry Farm? And this is kind of the idea. And he's like, well, what's the idea? And she goes, well, the idea is it's this little gypsy family and they make little marionettes and puppets and they're going to go to the fair and they're going to go to this country fair and they're going to sell all their little puppets and things. And you're going to journey along with them on the fair and have all these little adventures. That's the ride. And Rolly goes, OK.

And so he doodles on the plane coming out a bunch of ideas and he comes and meets with Marianne and goes, OK, OK, we'll come up with a proposal. And he goes back home to his house here in Los Angeles and sits at his kitchen table with like magic markers, you know, with the brightest, you know, I mean, Rolly, if you know Rolly's color palette, right, like it's the hottest, most intense colors in your life.

I love it. Not everyone loves it. I love it. I think it's genius. And he designs this basically this little ride about all these little gypsies and fortune tellers and this whole family and they're going to go on their way to the fair and he comes and he brings it. And so every I think it was every Tuesday or Wednesday, I'm not sure the day now, the Knott family would meet. So Walter and Cordelia and and and

and Russell and Marion and Virginia and Tony not the whole family would meet in the family house, which was behind the chicken dinner. Walter built the family house behind the chicken dinner. They'd meet and they'd have a family meeting about what are we doing? What's going on? And so Rolly came and presents this whole idea and they go, that's great. We love it. You're hired.

And now Rolly's got a job with a dark ride and he's got to do. And so, so he, he, and I won't, it's all in the book. I won't, cause I could talk for hours about this, but basically he gets to work going, oh my gosh, now we got to design this thing. Now we got to build it. And he's got basically like a year, right? To do it, which again is, and it's just like small world, right? Like they did small world, like 10 months. It's,

It's crazy pants. You don't do things that fast. But he takes it on and he hires a gentleman named Tommy O'Neill, who has a little company called Fantasy Fair. And he knows Tommy from Disneyland because Tommy did all the little Main Street windows in the 1960s when Roley was a field art director at Disneyland.

And he opens and operates a shop and they basically build this ride. And right, I'm going to say about a third of the way into production, they're starting to build sets and things. Marion goes, it's not going to be, she goes, well, wait a second. She goes, well, first of all, they go, so Rolly does all these drawings. And one of the, some of the drawings he does are these little cute bears because I guess gypsies have dancing bears sometimes.

And Marion goes, oh, wow, the bears are so cute. I love the bears. Can we do more of the bears? And Rolly's like, sure, we can do more of the bears. That's fine.

Marion also changed the theme of the entire land. She goes, you know what? We're not going to do the gypsy thing anymore. I got a new idea. Let's do the year that my parents, Walter and Cordelia, came to Buena Park, 1920, and we'll call this land circa 1920s or something like that. So this is how you get the roaring 20s land. And basically what they do is they take the buildings, you know, and they go down to cinder blocks and they tear off all the crappy rock work and

And they re-themed them and designed them as basically, you know, California roaring 20s, you know, 1920s buildings.

And there's this whole weird, I don't want to diverge too much, but there's this whole weird 70s, 20s thing that they get into. Like if you've ever seen the Brady Bunch episode where like Cousin Oliver comes and they throw pies and they've got straw boaters, right, Jeff? Or you remember like, you know, Shakey's, like, you know, Shakey's had straw boaters or like feral ice cream. It's like that vernacular. There's a 70s, 20s thing, like the 1920s scene through the lens of the people in the 70s. It's this weird thing, but it was a thing in the 70s.

Well, it's like 50 years, right? It's like the 80s now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, so she changes the theme right in the middle of it. So basically the ride goes from Romany people with puppets on the way to a fair to bears and animals making pies and jams and jellies on their way to the fair under the guise of the Roaring Twenties.

And then in the middle of that, Roley comes up with a foil, a bad character who is stealing the pies along. So of course they make boys and berry pies, right? And then the name of the ride is Knott's Berry Tales spelled B-E-A-R hyphen Y, a play on the word berry like Knott's boys and berries, right? In fact, two of the little bears are called boys and berry and girls and berry. Ha ha ha. And then he comes up with a character called Crafty Coyote who looks

loves, loves, loves their pies. And throughout the ride, he's stealing the pies until at the end he gets his comeuppance. So that's the ride. And there's all these cute little crazy moments in the middle of it. There's this blacklight frog forest. There's a gypsy camp with all these peppers ghosts. He hires a magician named Leo Benke, who did a lot of stuff at the magic shop at Disneyland. We found Leo. Leo was in his 90s, you know, and he remembered he still had like the proposal sheet of like all the effects. Wow.

Right. So, I mean, this is the most exhaustive look at like a product design and production of an attraction. And so they build this thing within a year. They actually, they get close to finishing it. The,

the ride catches on fire, right? And then they have to like, I mean, it's just, it's just, it's just crazy. So that's, that's in a nutshell. That's what Rolly's involvement on this is. And then in the middle of that, there's the roaring twenties, there's the corkscrew rollercoaster. And then you get into the eighties, you get into, uh, the wacky soapbox racers with Eddie Sato. Uh, you get into camp Snoopy and the change and how the, um, people, they bring in a general manager for the first time for magic mountain. And he radically changes things. Um,

the family kind of gets, I'm not going to say pushed aside, but they're, they're basically, they're not running knots anymore. And, and then what happens there? And then ultimately, uh,

the management that who are our age who grew up with knott's berry tales they bring back knott's berry tales like in the same location it was so to me it's like this the end cap to the story it's kind of fascinating i was no one was more shocked than me that they brought because there were rumors for years like oh they're going to bring back berry tales i said yeah right your aunt fanny they're not going to bring back knott's berry tales but they did you know so that's really cool so so

just as a momentary thought. Yeah. Barry roaring twenties. Is that a

Am I the only person that didn't catch this or am I just is that a pun on a bear pun? The Roaring Twenties? No, I don't think so. It's just because it's the Roaring Twenties. It is the Roaring Twenties. And actually, it's funny because they they the way they spelled the name of the land, the Roaring Twenties, they put an apostrophe in between the zero and the S in twenties, which is grammatically incorrect. Yeah.

And I kind of traced it back and I'm not going to say who, but the artist who basically did the pre-announcement press kit, put it in there and it like it calcified. So this is a thing, like I tell young designers, I'm like, man, like when you're working on something early on, be really careful because sometimes you'll put something in that you don't intend and it'll calcify and it'll make it all the way to the end of the project. And someone will go, what the heck is this thing?

It's just like, you have to like pay attention to like what you're doing. So that's anyway. So, so this, I gotta tell you, I've, I have the book. I've looked through it and read through some of it. I haven't read the whole thing yet. It's kind of new, new on the shelf, but I will say that it's, it's a, it's a big book is the point I was getting at. And so theme park fans and especially really crumb fans who there are a lot of them listening to nostalgia right now, this is a book for you. So can you tell me like before, before we wrap this up,

I do want to know, so you, you knew Rolly a lot and you talked to him many times and I don't, I know he wrote the introduction to this book. I don't know if that was specifically for this book. Yeah, it absolutely was. So we, um, so let's see, um, came up with the idea in, in, in 2020, it was this and the Disneyland book were my COVID projects. And again, I do tell everyone do not do two books at once because you will lose your freaking mind, uh, which I did. Um, but, um,

And basically, I told Rolly and Chris Crump, I said, you know, I want to do this. I said, everyone's still around. Now's the time to do it. Not, you know, 10 years from now. And so I just said, Rolly, I'm going to start working on this. And what I'd like to do is not just have you write the intro, but show you what we're doing and get your blessing, but also kind of work on it with you and more specifically, you

Um, between myself and my coauthor, Eric Linksweiler, who I just, I'd be remiss if I didn't say Eric did the most beautiful layout job on this. And he wrote some of it too. Um, but he really like, you know, he's, he's a brilliant designer. Um, Eric has done a lot of design work at Knott's. And in fact, if you go to Knott's and go to Virginia's gift shop, there's this wonderful, um, wall mural of a timeline of a history of Knott's Berry Farm. Eric did all of that.

Yeah, he created that. And that's loaded with stuff from my and Eric's collection, by the way. Yeah. But also he did a lot of graphics for Knots. So a lot of the new Roaring Twenties, the new restaurant at the back there. And Eric's done a lot of work there. And he used to work at Knots in the shooting gallery before it became a Panda Express. God help us all. So all that to say, back to Rolly, the artwork...

Really, there's not a lot of the original Knott's Fairy Tales artwork that we've been able to find. I have a few pieces. Eric has a couple pieces. Albert Rodriguez, who really funded and made this book happen, has several pieces. And then the Crump family have a few pieces. But it's like less than like 12 pieces total, something like that.

And so from looking at those originals, I'm like, colors are really hot. They're markers right out of the, right, like right out of the, right out of the, the big banana pack. Right. And, um,

But everything else that we had that's in the book was on slides. So they took all these documentation slides, which was great, but they were old, they were covered with hair and goop. And so I spent so much of 2020 scanning in those slides at the highest resolution my computer could handle and going into Photoshop and not just cleaning up the hairs, but trying to bring the color back.

And then I would drive down to Carlsbad where Rolly and Marie were living. And I'd show them on my laptop and I'd go, okay, Rolly, like, here's what I did with the color. I think based on the originals, this is what it kind of, and so he would say, oh yeah, or make the magenta hotter or whatever. Like I'd work with him on that. In terms of like the text and all that, he kind of left that to us.

I interviewed a bunch more people. I'd interviewed Rolly many times over the years for this and asked him some more specific questions, but you know, it's, but there are a lot of other people who work directly with him that I asked some very pointed questions. So, so he did really work on it with us. I would not say exhaustively so, but Rolly did work on it with us. It wasn't just a kind of like, Oh, he's doing it. So, and again, just like with the Mark Davis book, you know, the only sad thing about it was I just, you know, he passed away before we finished it. So,

Anyway. Wow. So again, the book, Not Spary Tales, the complete history and complete being operative word there, the complete history of the whimsical attraction. Chris, thank you so much for joining me on Mousetalgia. We can't. And let me just tell everyone where, oh, I should ask you, where can people get this book?

Oh, so the book, oh my gosh, you're going to have to put the URL, like, I don't know how you do this. Basically, we're selling it online, and only just this last weekend they started carrying it at Knott's. I would actually say, and what I've been saying to everyone, they started carrying it for the Boysenberry Festival's

And they only ordered a small we did a really small run. I'll say that you can order it from the website, which is the Fantasy Fair website. So if you type in Fantasy Fair and Knott's Berry Tales, you should be able to find it. But I'll I'll cut and paste the URL for you, Jeff. Oh, I got it. It's fantasy dash fun wheel dot com.

Okay. And they'll find it. You'll be able to find it. You can order it online or, but I was going to say, if you can find it within your heart to actually buy it at knots, that would help us out a lot more because they'll order a lot more. Oh, great. You only ordered a small limited run and they're actually sold out of Eric and my history of knots, knots preserved. And I don't know if we're going to do a new print run of that or not. I hope we will. But, um,

So this is a test for them because they merged, they just merged with six flags. Right. So it's been a big corporate shakeup. So for them to order anything was a whole big deal. Yeah. That's great. And you did do a second print run on knots preserved, right? A third. Okay. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. I'd love, I'd love to do Eric and I have talked about doing a knots preserved the size of this knots, very tails, like a 300 plus page version. Cause we just have so much stuff. Wow. Share, but yeah,

I don't know. It may or may not be in the future. We'll see. Chris, thanks so much for joining me on Mousetalgia. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Jeff. Well, that'll do it for this episode of Mousetalgia. Julia, thank you for joining me. Always a pleasure to have you along for the ride. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. Um, um, I should mention one more time. I am looking for volunteers to start helping out with the next generation of Mousetalgia. So if you have already written me, I appreciate, uh,

So your message is I do have them and I am going to get back to you, each of you shortly. I have been getting to the end of the school year here, but I'm going to focus on this soon as school is out and I'll get in touch with you all. Looking forward to seeing what we can do. So if you have any interest in podcasting or reporting.

or that type of thing, drop me a line and we'll see. Maybe you can help out with this here on Nostalgia. If you want to get in touch with me, just write to comments at nostalgia.com. If you want to support the show, go to nostalgiaplus.com and that'll take you to my Patreon account. Really appreciate everyone that helps out.

And I think that's it for this week. So do you have anything else you want to say, Julia? Maybe a plug for Pal-A-Round? Yes. You can come listen to a longer trip report of my season of The Forest Time, Pal-A-Round, which is a podcast that we do with, you probably know this name too, Tina. And Jeff comes and pals around with us pretty often as well.

Yeah. All right. That's it for this week. Let's all go out and Carpe Kingdom. Seize the magic, everybody. Bye-bye.

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