Disney World/Travel News 11-23-2022

News 11-23

Dan: Welcome back to another meeting of the Gold Key. Adventurers Society. My name is Dan Leonard, and joining me, I didn't expect you to do it.

Heather: you. I'm filling in for Jeff Williams

Dan: Your name's not Jeff. Joining me this week in the studio. Is Heather straight?

Heather: guys.

Dan: The one and only?

Heather: It's just us.

Dan: Yeah. Heather's the only one that was man enough to show up

Heather: right.

Dan: Our show was always just brought to you by Key to the World Travel. Key to the World Travel is a full service travel agency specializing in Theme parks, cruising, and destinations around the world. Head to www.keytotheworldtravel.com for more details and a no obligation quote on the vacation of a lifetime.

 I'm thankful for this heaping helping of travel news. First up, we've got a story out of Anaheim, California.

Heather: much news this week. It's.

Dan: yeah, we got a long list here to get. A lot of Disney news.

Heather: Lots of Disney

Dan: yeah. We're not gonna lead with the big one. Just making you wait

Heather: Just let that elephant sit in the room for a little.

Dan: Yeah. Y'all know what's coming. So so first up in keeping with the new key of the Disney key of Inclusion Disneyland has announced that they're adding dolls in wheelchairs to, it's a small world.

 It looks like they went up for the for the small world holiday overlay, but they're gonna be a permanent thing.

Heather: And they fit in so well. I love Disneyland's. Small world It, I like it so much better than the one at Walt Disney World.

Dan: Can I tell you a secret?

Heather: that?

Dan: I've never been on

Heather: Oh, damn. I thought that might be your secret. Oh, no.

Dan: Not that I didn't want to, but my one trip we spent a lot of time writing Buzz Light Year and Poo

Heather: Yeah. Yeah. It's great because they have all the Disney characters integrated into it, and they are not, I know at all that when they did it initially, all the fanboy freaked out. But they're not obtrusive. They look, the look is perfect and they just fit the Theme of the countries that they're in, and it's just a great extra touch.

I love it.

Dan: Yeah, and the holiday overlay for that is beautiful. It's

Heather: gorgeous. Looking at the two photos I saw of this, it looks like one of them is, Maybe that's Mexico or Spain. I can't quite tell. They have a close up on the first doll and it

Dan: I think that's Mexico with all those marigolds or,

Heather: And then what is this other one? The other one? Oh, I think the other one is in the end scene where it's just dolls from around the world wearing white.

Dan: Yeah. That's that final. Did you know that there's a fan theory about that room?

Heather: what's that? I

Dan: They're all angels

Heather: Oh. All the diet dolls have died. Fiery accident. Maybe

Dan: You know how too much into that.

the internet loves to come up with weirdly macab theories about innocent childhood things and it's a small, wild is one of them.

Heather: I always thought it was just to represent that we're all human beings, so they're all wearing the same color, but they fit together even though they're different. I didn't need to throw the death in there.

Dan: No. Especially the death of children. That's terrifying. We've really taken this story down. This is the

Heather: a dark turn. Moving on.

Dan: Yeah. This is the first time in the 67 year history of the park that any character in a wheelchair has been represented on any attraction.

Heather: That's kind of crazy. Seems like it was about time.

Dan: Yeah, my question I won't ask this question because I know that this ride is rather old since it's the original from the World's Fair. Has it been grant and fathered in is it's a small world itself. ADA compliant.

Heather: Oh, I haven't thought about it out there. I think it is. You do have to be able to transfer from a wheelchair into the boats, but the loading zone is all ramps. There are no stairs. I hadn't thought of that, but they don't, I'm trying to think if, oh, you know what, actually they do. They have a specific boat that they can roll a wheelchair right onto.

I forgot about all about that.

Dan: Good. Now I feel bad for being cynic,

Heather: So yes it is compliance. I don't remember whether they have that at World, but I'm assuming that they do have one that

Dan: I, I'd

Heather: just roll.

Dan: Since my computer is taking a sweet time, closing this tab and opening up the other one, how about we talk about the big news? We've got kind of a two for here of Disney stories,

Heather: a slight feeling that one may have maybe influenced the other a little bit, just a little bit of a straw breaking a Campbell's back possibly.

Dan: Yeah, that's right. So let's talk about, first of all, we saw some surprising price increases at Walt Disney World about a week ago As we're recording this.

Heather: and the first, it was like a two-pronged thing with the price increase. The first part of it made sense to me that for Walt Disney World, like Disneyland is now going to have a your park reservation when you buy a one day ticket. Your park reservation's gonna come with your ticket, which makes total sense.

And you have to pick which park you're gonna visit on that one day ticket. Makes sense?

Dan: It's great that because and that's something you hear about is people who have on a whim decided to make a one day trip, are the ones who seem to not know about the park reservation thing.

Heather: Someone who's in town for something else, you know at a conference or whatever. It makes it easier for them to get tickets and it also is yet another way that they can control capacity. If there's too many people that are scheduled for the Magic Kingdom that day, you're just not gonna sell a ticket for just a one day ticket.

That part made sense. It also made sense the price, the dynamic pricing is now dynamic pricing by park. It used to. Just Magic Kingdom or one of the other three, and now it's every single one. And again, that helps them with controlling the capacity. If you really wanna go to the Magic Kingdom for one day and the week between Christmas and New Year's, you're now going to be paying a really a lot of money.

That was a little bit shocking.

Dan: it's $189.

Heather: almost $200 for one day in the Magic Kingdom. And they did at the moment, say, that's. Their busiest week, which is from Christmas to New Years, so

Dan: And like you said, that makes perfect sense. Make the dynamic per park. Yeah. Cuz you're never going to H Kingdom, you're never going to run into a problem with

Heather: exactly,

Dan: capacity or, you know, so,

Heather: So that part of it, I understand. Going to that model, increasing the minimum starting price and the maximum right now was, I thought a little bit of bad timing, but again,

Dan: such a large amount and for the second time in a calendar

Heather: yes. And then the fact that all of the other tickets are going up as well, I just wonder what was going on in Walt in the Walt Disney Company's PR department when they found out that this was gonna happen, because it seems like it's the wrong time for.

Dan: Yeah. For so many reasons, a week before this announcement, they had somebody on financial news shows saying, you know if this inflation keeps going, if it, if we go into recession, we're prepared to do heavy discounting. Boom, we're raising the

Heather: raising the price.

Dan: if you're keeping score. The increase for the week between Christmas and New Year's at Magic Kingdom is $30,

Heather: per.

Dan: which normally price increases for the year are no more than 10.

Heather: Yeah, and the, we all are very aware that prices are going up everywhere, but this was not an inflationary price increase. This was not a, it's costing us more and we're not charging enough, so we have to raise the prices. This was just, we can charge more, so we're going to. Right now in the climate that we're in, it was just a bad move.

I really, I was very shocked by it The second time in a calendar year and just the temperature in the country right now is, it wasn't the time

Dan: I also enjoyed the prices going up on the passes, which on tickets that you cannot actually buy at this time.

Heather: ugh.

Dan: we're gonna raise the prices on all annual passes, but you can only buy the Florida resident pass right now.

Heather: I mean, yeah,

Dan: Just. Dumb.

Heather: it was not great and may have in, it may have, I think it's my opinion that it may have influenced the second bit of news that we were hit with at 9:00 PM on a Sunday night.

Dan: Yeah.

Heather: Bob's out

Dan: Meet the new Bob. Same as the old Bob, right?

Heather: Bob Iger returning for two years, which is the number is significant because they had in June given Bob Eck a new two year contract, which was a little bit of a, Hey, we're watching you, because that's not the normal length of their CEO contract.

They gave him a bit of a shorter one, and so now Bob Iger is stepping in basically to fill those two years that were left on his contract.

Dan: Though Bob's got a. Extending his tenure, so

Heather: they, some of the stuff I've read today some insider's information from the board was that they felt that Bob Eck had done irreparable damage to his ability to lead.

They felt that he had a string of missteps recently, and he really lost the confidence, not only of Wall Street, which we saw today. Disney's stock price jumped, what, 5% overnight with just with this news.

Dan: After hitting a one year low

Heather: He'd lost the confidence of major executives. The board really was not happy with him, and he didn't have the support of just rank and file employees after a lot of this stuff.

I mean, he, this was a guy that couldn't walk through the parks without being heckled. It's iger did leave on a high, so he's kind of coming. On that high. And hopefully he can undo some of the damage that was done. Go back to focusing on creativity and the gold that they have in their imagineers and their creative staff.

Dan: Yeah. At the very least, returning some of that culture that had been lost over the last couple of. Will be huge for them. I know that morale, especially amongst the imaginary department,

Heather: so low.

Dan: because of how things were being cut and the directions they were given and what they had to focus on, which really makes it kind of kind of exciting for some of the blue sky ideas that they floated at D 23.

I, you know, I don't. Bob Iger coming back necessarily means they're gonna start throwing a ton of money at the parks. More that's gonna magically show up because I mean, the Disney company's a lot more than the parks, but I think that he'll be more likely to not stifle the

Heather: Give some of the control back into the hands of the creative people and not to the point where they can't even start these blue sky dreams without getting permission from the bean counters.

Dan: Not even the, not just the blue. Once it gets past the blue sky spot, there's a lot of disappointing cutbacks on Marvel Avengers campus and Galaxy's Edge that were,

Heather: Galaxy's Edge is a hu. That was the huge one we've been talking about for a while.

Dan: I mean, that was directly, even though Iger was still in his like co-leadership phase, then those cuts were directly attributed to

Heather: Yeah, definitely.

Dan: So there's some hope for those projects they've got coming up.

Heather: Fingers crossed that he can at least. I mean, he's not gonna be able to fix it immediately. And it, there's still the economy and the bus and the numbers and that stuff is still important. But Eck just didn't seem to be able to balance those two things and really cash in on the creative side. And that was sad. It was always sad to see.

Dan: Yeah. When it becomes, I mean, yes, Disney is a business, but it's not just another business. It's got all that other stuff

Heather: It has so much history and that history has always been steeped in the creativity. I was talking to some colleagues this morning who were, Eck never really had the the partner who could be the creative side, Walt always had Roy. And they had some other CEOs that had. A partnership where someone could really be the person who watched the business and the numbers while the other person dealt with the creativity.

They need a strong, creative ceo and then someone who is the chief financial officer who can focus on the rest of the stuff, and then they need to be able to work together. This pairing seemed to be, Eck always seemed more like a CFO to me. He wasn't a great leader.

Dan: That's where he came from. He came from Disney stores, right? Isn't that what he was in

Heather: And when you bring someone from the consumer product side and elevate them into that, someone with no background in the entertainment aspect of it, it can be a problem. And it just felt that way from the beginning. He also had the misfortune of not really being very charismatic, and so he couldn't ever get.

The support of all the people, you know, nobody cared about seeing him walking through the park would, you know, freak out like they did if Bob Iger was in the park or even someone like Josh tomorrow and who knows, he could be as responsible for some of the stuff we really don't like in the parks, but he's charismatic and so people.

Dan: exactly. I think they didn't give Bob's beard a chance, enough of a chance to do its work before they came to him.

Heather: came in too late.

Dan: Yeah.

Heather: Yeah, we'll see. I'm cautiously optimistic and excited for what Bob Iger can do in the next two years, and hopefully one of the main things he does is find the right person to replace him at the end of it.

Dan: That's one of his key goals that they put forth in their statement was that he's going to be working on the succession plan and the plan for

Heather: they were really hurt when Tom Skaggs left. Like he had been the one that was being groomed to replace Bob Iger, and then they just kind of went a different direction.

Dan: Yeah, that was a weird time. There was a lot of like behind the scenes jockeying

Heather: Yes.

Dan: went on that it's an interesting world if you really wanna get nerdy about that. Which I

Heather: holes you could go down.

Dan: Yeah. Yes. Got enough rabbit holes right now. So more news outta Disney, Walt Disney World. We're now allowing guests more time to cancel their dining reservations before incurring a

Heather: Yes, but it is important to note that there is still a penalty. So it used to be you had to cancel it the day before to avoid the cancellation fee, but it also became tricky. Day of. If you decided you didn't wanna cancel, but you wanted to change, like you saw a better reservation pop up, you couldn't do that without calling and that was always a huge pain. Now you can do that, you can change in the app the day of, and you can cancel up to two hours before, but there's still a cancellation fee if you do not change or cancel in the before, that two.

Dan: That's right. And haven't we been seeing that I could be wrong and if I am, I'm gonna just cut this out. Haven't we seen some people noticing that when they drop reservations to not becoming available right away?

Heather: I have noticed that yes,

Dan: Yeah, so I don't know if that's directly connected to this or if it's part of some of their strategy for fighting the hoarders.

Heather: That is definitely a priority for them right now. And they're trying to figure out how. To combat the hoarding that's going on.

Dan: We gave them the solution three weeks

Heather: yes. , we did,

Dan: It's easy Charge a $10 down payment to be applied to your

Heather: I think that is the best way. Instead of a cancellation fee, have a deposit on the reservation. That's a good, yeah,

Dan: Put some skin in.

Heather: exactly. That's gonna stop hoarding because as you, in order to hoard, you'd have to have a lot of money free. To hold all these reservations. It's nuts. If you've been in any of these dining sharing Facebook groups, people will have 20 reservations for the same restaurant on the same day.

And a lot of them like to say they're, I'm doing this to help people. They, yeah, but then they're charged trying to charge you five bucks to take over their reservation. They're not helping you. They're making money off of you. I think, I strongly think that this is a reason. We're still not seeing the dining plans back.

I think they feel like they need to fix this before they bring them back because if you have, you've bought the dining plan and then you can't get reservations it's gonna piss people off. So

Dan: Yeah. They don't want another, I mean, that'll be like the Disneyland AP

Heather: yes, just more reasons that we can't have nice things

Dan: Yes.

Heather: people.

Dan: Quit being jerk bags. Oh, we'll say about that. And then, oh, before we ah, come on. Computer. There we go. Before we leave Walt Disney World, cause I got things a little out work. Let's let's talks, stay in the Disney Land and let's talk about Disneyland real quick.

So the Treehouse in adventure. This was very exciting news to me. So Tarzan's Tree House?

Heather: was so glad to see this.

Dan: Yeah, the tree house has been closed for refurb for a while, and there's a lot of speculation that they're gonna put a new IP into it. I still don't understand the reasoning behind People thought it was gonna be in canto, so they were thinking it

Heather: strong rumor that it would be in canto. Yeah.

Dan: Inside the little boy's room who talks to the animals or whatever.

 No, but this is even better. It is going to be in, it's going back to its roots.

Heather: to Swiss family Robinson.

Dan: Kind of, because the official name I didn't see, where is it? Oh, the if you zoom in on the concept, it says it's the Adventureland Tree house inspired by Walt Disney,

Heather: Oh,

Dan: Robinson. Yeah. So it's not the Swiss family tree house, but it basically is they're kind of renewing some of the decor, making some of it a little bit fancier.

There's. The giant waterwheel and all that stuff and is inspired by Swiss family, but it's, it looks a little more whimsical

Heather: It really does. The concept art is great.

Dan: I'm excited to see that though. I love the Swiss family Treehouse. I love that movie. I was always, as a kid just that treehouse part of the movie was just fascinating to me.

The ingenious little mechanisms they came up with, all powered by the water.

Heather: And it says it will open sometime in 2023. The opening date is still forthcoming. We, Chelsea, how long has it been closed? Now that I'm thinking about it, it's been a little bit.

Dan: It was this fall that it shut down because they were working on, their first step was they took out that extra tree trunk that they had added that to support the walkway

 That was blocking up the a lot of it comes to, they're just trying to open up the guest walkways so that you don't get a

Heather: They needed that area right there as a bottleneck, and they fixed the one around the little barbecue spot over there near Indiana Jones. That one was always a pain. They took over our shop and moved the seating indoors to, to keep that a little bit more open, but the treehouse was still back. There.

Can be really congested.

Dan: Yeah, so, so they move, they open that up. So that'll be good. That'll be interesting. I would love to see that once it. Honestly, I mean let's update the one at Walt Disney.

Heather: Yeah, for sure.

Dan: Make it fun. Make it new, right? Make it pink. Make it.

sure. Match the castle. Make it pink. Pink it blue. Do you have anything else on Disney?

Heather: No, I think that's it. The biggest Disney news this week was really the double whammy of increasing prices and then getting rid of Bob paycheck.

Dan: Yep. May he rest in peace? We are heading into the holiday times in the park, which is one of my favorite times of year.

Yep. We'll have some, we'll have some coverage of that, specifically the Appco one coming up in

Heather: That is a fun festival. I'm hoping that somebody will do the cookie stroll and give us a, some ideas of how the cookies are tasting this year.

Dan: Did you hear that Kelly

Heather: Kelly Cookie Stroll.

Dan: Did you see KU opening back up? Tomorrow or the day after, as we're recording

Heather: My oldest son is thrilled about this. He loves Tecu.

Dan: the, it doesn't, I didn't see any details on what the new menu's going to be, but it does say that they've updated the menu and I'm assuming the price is, I think it was two 50 for the meat option. I don't know if that went, I'm assuming that went up

Heather: It's not cheap folks, but it's really good.

Dan: but it's a big it's a very fancy tasting menu.

Heather: is true.

Dan: It's on the todo list. Yeah. So that's exciting. That's all outta Disney. So universal, Orlandos got their holiday offerings. Grinch.

miss started up November 12th is gonna run until January 1st, 2023. And also Christmas at all the Potter stuff at the same time. Looks pretty awesome. And also we're gonna have some people down there next week, and so we'll get some details about that.

I just wanted to, real quick, since we ran through some holiday food at for Walt Disney World, there was a couple of holiday food standouts at Universal that I wanted to get your take on. Apparently at Universal, they're really big on hot cocoa bombs.

Heather: yes. This is a huge thing.

Dan: The melting chocolate thing in your hot cocoa.

Change your hot cocoa. I don't have a good picture of it on this article, so it doesn't, they have a really cute one in Seuss Landing, that's the hot cocoa, and you get this big green chocolate heart that's supposed to be the grinch's heart and it melts in the hot cocoa and releases tiny little candy hearts

Heather: Oh, cute. I like

Dan: you know, since I'm like a 10 year old girl, that sounded really cute to me. I also am really interested in this Roast Beast sandwich that you can get at. In SES landing at the Circus MCGs Cafe Stupendous,

Heather: yummy.

Dan: It's a roast beef sandwich that's been dipped in French onion soup. But then since the food in Whoville is like very big and very small on top of it, they have a tiny little sandwich.

It's a mini meatloaf sandwich pinned to the top of the roast beef sandwich. That's

that very.

Heather: Are you familiar with who Earl is?

Dan: Yeah, Earl the

Heather: Earl Squirrel. He has his own hot chocolate bomb over on the studio side. The acorn bomb

Dan: Yeah. It's an acorn with like caramel and

Heather: salted caramel filled, acorn shaped hot chocolate bomb. Can also get Earl's Nutty Nog, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. The Nutty Nog is back this year. We had a lot of fun talking about that last

I believe I, I can believe that. That sounds like us.

Dan: It does look like they don't have. Last year they had that cute little Christmas Christmas market

Heather: Oh

Dan: at City Walk. It doesn't look like that's back. They have a food truck and a food trailer with some, not necessarily Christmasy sounding foods, but delicious sounding foods. The food truck has a bunch of mac and

Heather: Oh yeah, I was just looking at that. The Nashville mac and cheese and, Ooh, golden mac and cheese, pork belly, mac and

Dan: mac and cheese. Sweet potato, pork belly hashed with bourbon pecan sauce

Heather: Oh,

Dan: white cheddar, mac and cheese shells.

 We have to put this on the do eat list for

Heather: definitely. That sounds delicious.

Dan: And then the the food trailer has a trio of Philly cheese steak

Heather: I love a Philly cheese steak. You're right. None of these really sounds, all that holiday themed

 Delicious.

Dan: A lot of it this year is very hot. Coco centric. Very peppermint centric.

Heather: me up. It's Orlando. I mean, you a decent chance in December of having a coolish night, but I'm not sure whether it's hot chocolate worthy.

Dan: For next week this week as we'll, no, for next week. Cause we're releasing this week. The lows are in the

Heather: Oh, alright. There you go.

Dan: So it's like forties up to seven.

Heather: that Disney World. In the Florida or Universal Orlando. Pardon me.

Dan: Yeah. So yeah, I would do that. So we'll have some more info on the holidays. They're going. The Christmas light projection show on Hogwarts as

Heather: so cool.

Dan: The Grinch Miss celebrations, there's all kinds of Grinch all over the place, and these hilarious and fun Manheim Steamrolls doing their concerts.

Heather: Oh, I

Dan: Holiday tribute store is back. Yeah, there's, I mean there's holiday fun all over the place, although I will, They craze, they close crazy early for wanting people to come enjoy the holidays. The parks are closing at 7:00 PM all next week.

Heather: I don't get it

Dan: But other than that, go enjoy some universal holiday stuff.

Come back next week to hear, or two weeks to hear some more. All right, I think we're done with Theme parks. You can move on to some other

Heather: The rest of the world.

Dan: Yeah. Did you see Travel and Leisure has declared the destination of the year for next year, where apparently we're all supposed to visit the United

Heather: I am down with this. I love the United Kingdom,

Dan: I would love to visit the

Heather: and you know it's timely, right? Everyone here loves Ted Lasso. We're obsessed with the crown, so it's time to go across the pond. And see the sites of the shows that we love. The great British, British Bakeoff,

Dan: go. Go wag a finger at those mean old royals who won't leave Megan Markle and Harry alone. All that stuff. I really wanna, we've been talking a lot at home about, we really, UK in general, but Ireland is a destination that's on our

Heather: Ireland is one of my favorite places in the world. It's so beautiful. But one of my favorite things about it is that it's just you. It just feels like home. Everyone is so friendly. I know that might be seem like a little bit of a cliche, but the Irish are really friendly people and they wanna help.

They wanna show you their country. They wanna drink a pint with you. It's amazing

Dan: So that's on our list. Whales, if you're into sheep, I feel like maybe I make that joke too often, but, you know I mean Wales beautiful farming mountainous country where Led Zeppelin wrote some of their best albums.

Heather: is still on my bucket list. I haven't made it there yet, and I really want to see so much of Scotland, but I'm saving it for the summer because it's pretty cold there It's probably a good call. Yeah, right. I mean, yeah. I was trying to come up with a, I'll just a slide.

You can't walk around in your kilt in the wintertime, or you'll freeze your nuts off

Dan: At the very least, you're gonna have to put something out underneath

Heather: Yeah.

Dan: Maybe that's what they keep in that rabbit for pouch in that, what is that called? Arin?

 Yes. Maybe that's what they store in there. They're wintertime for underneath theirs. So yeah, go visit the a

Heather: have a pint toast to the king. It's so weird to say that. Still

Dan: I know I was thinking about that like literally overnight because they talked about how after the announcement the crowds were singing, God Saved the King, and it's it's so weird that like that with the snap of a finger, their national anthem changed.

Heather: Anyway, now they gotta change their money and

Dan: Yeah.

Heather: all of it.

Dan: Yeah.

Heather: It

Dan: It's so.

Heather: me to go back and rewatch the crown from beginning to end. It's one of my favorite

Dan: I've I love

never wished that show,

Heather: You're missing out Dan

Dan: I've just never understood the fascination with the royal family in general. So

Heather: That's fair.

Dan: I don't want to accidentally get sucked into being fascinated with the royal family and then not understanding myself.

Heather: I'm fascinated with all of British history, so it's, it just fits.

Dan: Yeah. So there's this direct quote from from a United Airlines

Heather: Oh,

Dan: ply who about a month ago at this point, we're slow getting to this story. It's been on our queue for a while. He was overheard saying,

Heather: it's because I don't wanna click on this story and have to see the photo, but let's get it over with.

Dan: I have had it with these Mickey Mouse snakes on this Donald Ducking plane says United Airlines Pilot. And really the snake's not that bad. I think they decided that it was a gard

Heather: I don't care what kind of snake it is, if there's

Dan: It's an itty bitty baby snake.

Heather: snakes are not necessarily itty bitty and baby, they can get pretty huge.

Dan: Yeah. But then, I mean, I mean, huge is relative.

Heather: on a plane, and I don't find snakes cute. My son keeps trying to show me videos of this person has a pet. Snake that they put hats on the snake and then it slithers around their house in the hats.

I don't care. The hat doesn't

Dan: Snakes and hats are no, snakes and hats are adorable.

Heather: also doesn't make it cute. Calling it a snake. A can't. A can't with the snakes.

Dan: no. Yeah. So flight took off from Tampa and flew to Newark. That's from Florida to New Jersey for our geo geographically challenged listeners. We'd love you anyway. So it's like a six hour flight, right?

Heather: Yes, and it was slithering around the plane the whole time.

Dan: Yeah. Nobody could manage to, to catch the snake for.

Heather: don't know whether I would have made it the whole way. I would've been so anxious the entire time. It it was first spotted in business class when passengers started shrieking and pulling up their feet, which is the correct reaction.

Dan: You would think with the temperature, they typically keep the inside of the plane at that, it would've been sluggish and easy to catch is what I'm

Heather: Apparently not.

Dan: It's not usually toasty warm in an airplane. Garter snakes typically are between 18 to 26 inches long, so that's not really a huge snake.

Heather: It's a

Dan: over two

Heather: I don't care.

Dan: I mean,

Heather: I was watching.

Dan: to 26. So it realistically that's more like 12 to 20 inches long.

Heather: Yeah, exactly. Apparently this is not the first time that this has happened. In February, a flight f in Malaysia had to be diverted. After passengers saw a snake in a light fixture, it was trapped. So they

Dan: Oh boy.

Heather: and removed the. From that,

Dan: Why'd you not? Why not just leave it up there and take care of it once you land?

Heather: I mean, I guess, but here's the one that would've, I mean, I would've died about a year ago. A large snake, it says large, believed to be a venomous green Viper, dropped out from an overhead compartment on an Arrow Mexico flight in Mexico. I mean,

Dan: No

Heather: No thank you. I have you seen the movie Bullet Train? I just watched it on a plane actually yesterday, and part of the story involves a highly venomous snake and it's the, there's some stuff about it in the beginning and then you forget about it. And I almost caused an incident on the plane. I think when it suddenly, the stake appears again in the movie and I gasped so loud that the people in front of me turned around and I kind of freaked out the passengers around me because it scared me so bad when this snake reappeared. I'm just not a fan and I think it, that's kind of one of my worst nightmares is a snake being loose on a plane.

I can't get away from it. Dan.

Dan: that's true.

Heather: But Okay. I'd rather it was a garter snake than a venomous snake.

Dan: Yeah, no. Let's leave the green fibers at home. Why do we need to bring that on thing?

Heather: anyone's bringing a snake on a plane in the first place. How did it get on the plane?

Dan: I have no idea. No idea. One place that you rarely ever hear about snakes getting loose and wandering around those on a cruise

Heather: I hope not.

Dan: and a host, especially not on this particular cruise, because as Amara Cruises has announced their 2025 World Cruise, apparently they announced, It wasn't that long ago was it that they announced they were doing this world cruise in 2024 and it sold out

Heather: so fast it, it always shocks me how fast these things sell.

Dan: yeah. So it's going to, the cruise will depart from San Diego and finish up in the United Kingdom. It's gonna stop in a total of 37 countries

Heather: 155 nights.

Dan: Includes 46 late night or overnight stops to soak up the atmosphere of a destination.

Heather: is a wonderful smaller ship luxury line too. It wouldn't be so bad to be on that ship for almost a whole year. It's going to Honolulu, Sydney, Bangkok, Bali, ugh

Dan: Even with a snake on the ship, I'd go

Heather: There's more places to hide from it on a cruise ship.

Dan: that's true. So this This? Yeah, this is a really small ship. The ship holds 684 guests. And also interesting that they are changing up the cruise. It says that 60% of the ports on this sailing are different from the one that they're taking in 2024. So they're moving around exploring new places

Heather: Yeah, and with a smaller ship like this, you can get into some of the more exotic, smaller ports, which is very cool.

Dan: Yeah. As part of the cruise travelers will receive $4,000 in onboard credit, plus an extra $3,000 spend on shore excursions. You get roundtrip business class airfare to the port, and it also includes the premium beverage package for two guests and weekly laundry service.

Heather: necessary.

Dan: Yes. That's the most important part.

Heather: They're spending a lot of time over in Southeast Asia getting hitting Australia, New Zealand, all those cool places. It'll be stopping in Egypt, so great. Asia. Oh, would like to see all of these places. They're not headed all the way down to Antarctica. You have to add that on. On a different voyage.

Dan: Yes, that's a real once in a lifetime experience.

Heather: I've heard that. I've heard that.

Dan: So as we're requiring I can speak today as we're recording, we're right on the cus of the cusp of the busiest travel days of the entire year.

Heather: wants to go home for the holidays. For Thanksgiving

Dan: That's right Thanksgiving, and we've got some more food centric celebrations coming up in the next couple of months. So with that, the TSA put out some tips to make sure that you

Heather: to put a gun in a chicken? Was that on the list?

Dan: No, we already covered that. I think that's separate. That's a different issue all together, which I still don't understand. I'm still confused how that happened. But yeah, if you're flying home for the holidays, we've got some tips which really it seems like a no-brainer. If it's more than 3.4 ouncers, you gotta check it, right?

Heather: Yep.

Dan: Ouncers, I said ouncers,

Heather: if it's a can of your homemade cranberry sauce.

Dan: That's right. So foods that are liquid or spreadable need to be carefully packed into check luggage. And I think that might be where some of the confusion comes in the spreadable area. So if it's a gel, it is still liquidy enough. So,

Heather: and jellies. Count.

Dan: that's right. Cranberry sauce, either homemade or canned gravy.

Wine, champagne, cider.

Heather: who's traveling with gravy? Like

Dan: I. You got that special stuff. Maybe they've got like a gravy starter that they've been feeding all year round with chickens from their roasted Turkey. I don't

Heather: it in your checked bag in a lot of Ziploc layers.

Dan: Yeah, along with preserves, jams, jellies, and maple syrup. The solid stuff, the good stuff such as baked goods, meat stuff, and Cass mac and cheese and fresh fruits and vegetables, you can carry through the TSA checkpoints.

Heather: bring your whole Turkey or your chicken just without weapons in the category in the cavity.

Dan: Yes, but it's got to fit underneath the seat in front of you. Right. . I don't think your fellow passengers would appreciate you putting that in the overhead bin because of shifting , because things may shift during flight,

Heather: They have some helpful photos on their website that shows this is what you can carry on an apple pie, a box of stuffing, a packet of gravy starter that is not in liquid form. That's

Dan: Yeah. All of all this stuff that's basic grocery store staples that you shouldn't have to fly home with because you've got those. Yeah, I think this was all their way of saying, Hey, make sure your liquids are under

Heather: I look forward to two weeks from now seeing some fun articles about the wacky crap that people tried to fly home for Thanksgiving with,

Dan: That's always an early, that's always a fun, a highlight of early December is seeing the crazy crap. Yeah. Follow the TSA Instagram for some of those photos, I'm sure they'll be show sharing that's a quality follow

Heather: is. I love it.

Dan: tsa they like to show off what they've confiscated.

Wow. That means we're almost done. I had two quick, I'm calling condom quick hits for Thanksgiving In honor of Turkey Day.

Yeah, and I don't I don't know if these are necessarily entirely one of 'em is definitely travel related. We'll get to that. But first of all, I wanna talk about the fact that Americans once celebrated Thanksgiving with tricks, treats in mayhem.

Heather: had no idea about.

Dan: And apparently this went relatively late in into the 20th century, but so the at the turn of the century, Thanksgiving Day looked like Halloween. It was called Ragamuffin

Heather: So weird.

Dan: Yeah. And in New York, specifically in Manhattan was where this mostly took place. Kids would dress up either like hobos or.

Heather: a good

Dan: Or famous figures from American history.

It's a weird, it's a weird justice position there. It's like you're either George Washington or you're a hobo. And they would run from door to door asking if they had anything to if the occupants of the house had anything to give them for Thanksgiving and they collect apples, candy, pennies, snacks that sort of thing.

Heather: the house that you throw the rotten apples at, the one that gives you the pennies.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah, probably. So it was mostly an opportunity for the kids to and they would also, the other part of this was that they would take, get up to tricks and mayhem. For example, pelting pedestrians with confetti and flour, pitching rides on the fenders of moving cars. Oh yeah, there's some, I mean, there's some tickers who make a lot of money doing that to this very day, covering each other with

Heather: Was this like the precursor to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade,

Dan: Oh, almost. It kind of seems like

Heather: in Manhattan.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. And so this went on into the 1950s?

Heather: I've never heard of this.

Dan: yeah. Because I mean, modern Halloween trick or treat as we know, it didn't really take off. Into the forties and fifties in

Heather: interesting.

Dan: The last recorded ragamuffin day in New York was in 1956 in the Bronx.

 So

 I say once

Heather: tradition to bring back, right?

Dan: yeah, maybe we can update this the way we've talked about, you know, some of those murmuring and other kinds of ha Christmas traditions.

I.

Heather: with a sheep skull.

Dan: Yeah. I mean if you incorporated the social drinking into this, where you go out dressed up like a hobo and get drunk and cosme him in the streets,

Heather: we don't

Dan: that would really liven up. That's right. That's right. I mean, would you rather. Throw around the football on Thanksgiving afternoon or go out in the street, dress like a hobo and throw flower at people.

I know what I would prefer to do. . Yeah. Another interesting way that you can celebrate Thanksgiving is at a holiday world Theme Park, which is in the town of Santa Claus, Indiana.

Heather: Santa Claus, Indiana Holiday World. I didn't know this exist.

Dan: Yeah. It's a weird little Theme park that is there was actually kind of like a little rash of Christmas themed Theme parks that opened up in the 1940s, 1950s. And this is only one of the only ones that survived in America. It started as Santa Claus land, and it was just Christmas themed with shops and rides and stuff. In the eighties, they said we need something to keep the folks coming in. We're gonna add some more holidays. And so the first the newest lands added were Halloween in the 4th of July in the eighties.

Heather: Oh man, there's a Turkey shape tilt of Whirl

Dan: Yeah. So, so then not that long ago, oh, 2006, they added the latest section is Thanksgiving land.

Heather: Yay.

Dan: Yeah. And so they do have a tilt of world that you sit in a Turkey and sprint around. And then they have one of those, they have one of those Viking ship rides that they claim is the wa, the Mayflower.

So I guess kind of,

Heather: it.

Dan: yeah. And then there's a steel rollercoaster It was a

there's two roller coasters. There's two Thanksgiving Theme

Heather: Oh.

Dan: coasters. One is a wooden rollercoaster called the voyage. It's a mile long coaster. That's apparently actually like a Coaster fan favorite. It wins awards every year.

It's got huge drops and and free falls and it's themed. It's got landscaping and theming to make it themed to pilgrims on the main.

Heather: Ah, okay. I got it. Like you're coming across on the voyage.

Dan: Yes.

Heather: Hence, it's called the voyage. I get it.

Dan: yeah, and I don't see any pictures. I'll have to look for a video, but they make it seem like it's actually themed

Heather: The steel rollercoaster, that's is called the Thunderbird. Is it a Turkey?

Dan: No, this one's a stretch. I have a feeling that was the name of the rollercoaster when they bought it off the shelf, because they say here this, the Thunderbird needed a little finessing to fit the Theme. We had to kind of create our own legend to more or less pull together the pilgrims ride in the Mayflower to the Thunderbird, helping them find their way.

Heather: Oh, okay. I got it. They should have named it, renamed it something Turkey themed. Although given that turkeys are flightless birds, maybe

Dan: Yeah, that's, that might be a little bit of a problem. The other problem for guests in this land is they have a restaurant that serves very large Thanksgiving dinners year round, so, so you can go and get your Turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy in Indiana in the summer. And then immediately get off and ride a giant wooden rollercoaster

Heather: bad idea.

Dan: Yeah, it sounds like a lot of pu waiting to

Heather: I wanna hear more about this dark ride where you round up neon turkeys with infrared, Turkey collars.

Dan: yeah, that sounds like the best park, to be honest. It's kind of like that. Which park is it? It's one of the Asian parks has the monsters ink ride where you shine a flashlight at 'em. Sounds like that. Neon turkeys, because those are my favorites. They're attached to Delta World.

Heather: This looks delightful, although I think it's funny that you, it's closed from November through March, so it's closed on most of the holidays that it celebrates. But you know what? If you really love Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's a way to celebrate them the rest of the year.

Dan: right.

Heather: It's Santa Claus, Indiana.

 I'm here for Turkey shaped tilted whirls. I think we need a field trip.

Dan: Sounds good to me. Let's celebrate

Heather: I might ride the roller coasters before stuffing my face in the Thanksgiving dinner section.

Dan: that's probably a good choice. Thanks for hanging out with us again this week. If you're excited to experience the magic of the holidays at Disney World or Universal, or explore anywhere else around the world, Key to the World Travel has a butterball Turkey stuffed fall of expert travel planners, and they're all ready to make your vacation dreams a reality. Head to www.keytotheworldtravel.com to get started with a no obligation quote.

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