EarzUp! | Disneyland Comes To Abu Dhabi

[00:00:00] Hey Sandra, wir haben uns ja lange nicht mehr gesehen. Grüß dich, Nadine! Mensch, du siehst ja toll aus. Ja, danke. Ich hab mein Plus fürs gesündere Ich entdeckt. Was? Komm, ich zeig's dir. Die Bewegungskurse der AOK Plus. Kostenfrei für AOK Plus Versicherte. Entdecke dein Plus fürs gesündere Ich und starte mit unserem Selfcheck. Ganz einfach online auf aok.de. Aus Liebe zur Gesundheit. AOK Plus. AOK Plus.

[00:00:32] It's time for the show that brings the magic right to your speakers. EarzUp! What's up, everybody? EarzUp Podcast. We are back at it. And man, let me tell you. We weren't gonna try to push this show to next week because we were like, I don't know, man. We're not, I don't think we're ready. And then announcements came. And then Bob Iger and Josh DeMauro had to fly to the Middle East to announce some garbage.

[00:01:02] Not literally, but, you know, I'm just saying. And so now we had to have a show we had to talk about. So we have to talk about it. So in case you didn't know, the Disney Parks, the Disney Company is opening a brand new Disney Park, the seventh in the world. In Dubai. It's a pretty big deal. In Abu Dhabi. Which I just I love kind of the names of places over there because they just sound like children's rhymes. I love it. Or Star Wars. Robert went down to Abu Dhabi. Yes, it does.

[00:01:31] It does sound like Star Wars. Yeah. So we are going to be talking about that. And then Taryn has a little bit of history about the Pendleton Wool Mills. Yes, I do. Yeah. And like you've pitched this for a while and I just never really understood it. That's and that's fine. And now I think you'll have a better understanding of why I wanted to do it. But we've all been clamoring for it. Yes, I know. It's really been on everyone's list of like, you know what I need to know more about? Wool. Yes.

[00:02:01] Oh, for sure, dude. So yeah. Anyway, so that's that's the show tonight. We're going to get into. And, you know, of course, with the announcement of the new park, that's it. It's just there's an announcement. So I thought, well, I want to know more about where this place is and what's going on in the general area, because it's not just a Disney theme park. It's on island with a bunch of other stuff. So I ran through a little bit about the history of the area and and the people building this park and what it's going to be.

[00:02:29] And then we're going to maybe some speculation about what's going to be there. Hard to say. I don't know. Details are scant right now. Scant. But I've never stopped a podcast before. Sure. That's true. I'm sure we'll get into this, but like, have they announced like a time period? No. OK. They haven't officially, but I have found some information that points to them having a general time period. Yeah. OK. Yeah. That was a tease. Dug up some stuff.

[00:02:59] That's true. And I wonder, Eric, if our friends at Concierge are going to be going to be, you know, clamoring to add the the Disneyland Abu Dhabi, as it's being called right now, to the the lineup over there at Concierge.

[00:03:15] Well, you know, it's interesting because yesterday we had our monthly all ears meeting and we discussed the new park and some of the controversy around it and not necessarily timelines, but a little bit about timelines. And unfortunately, this falls into the same place as Tokyo Disneyland, where Tokyo Disneyland is owned by the Oriental Land Company. That's the actual name.

[00:03:44] You know, I'm not I'm not out of date here. Don't cancel him, folks. Please, please cancel me. I need a break. But they're there. So Abu Dhabi will be owned by a another similar group of mega billionaires. And really what they're doing is licensing the Disney name and paying for the expertise of imagine. You're literally stealing my show. Oh, sorry. Never mind.

[00:04:14] But no, we won't we won't be able to sell that one. We could tell you about it. Oh, so you can't do Tokyo. We can't do Tokyo either. Oh, interesting. I thought you were asking me a question. I was literally just asking you if Conte Years was going to be selling. No, we didn't need a whole history of the thing. That's my job. Forget all the things I said. Jason will say them much more eloquently later. Maybe, but not as more good looking or. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, I kind of figured that that was kind of more of a, you know, of a joke. But you know what?

[00:04:44] Hey, man, you never know. Stay tuned. But if you want to go to any of the domestic parks, hit up Conce Years. Go to Conce Years.com. And if you want a lengthy description about who owns the parks and why, email Eric at Concee. I don't know. Listen to this show. Jason will tell you. He knows all about them. I don't really. I know what's written in front of me. That's right. Yeah. I'm Ron Burgundy, basically. Whatever's written in front of me, I'm just going to say it, you know? Anyway, Conce Years.com. They are official travel partners.

[00:05:14] They can help you get to where you need to go. And then wherever you're going, they will help you figure out wherever that is. So if you're talking Disney parks, they are experts at the Disney parks. They know how to navigate all of the Fast Pass stuff. And, you know, I know it's not Fast Pass anymore, but the Lightning Lane and the Genie Plus and the whatever is going on over there. Reservations for whatever you need. Conce Years has them. Anyway, that being said, Tara. Yeah. Why don't you go ahead and kick us off with the Pendleton Wool Mill. All right.

[00:05:42] So we're going to talk today about Disneyland and Pendleton and the relationship between the two and why it's actually historically significant. Okay. Like in the broader scheme of history or like? We'll say theme park history. We'll call it merchandising history, maybe. Okay. When Disneyland opened in 1955, it was different from other theme parks at the time because of one revolutionary idea that entertainment should be immersive.

[00:06:12] Guests wouldn't just watch stories take place. They'd experience them. Now, of course, we know each section of the park tells a different American narrative, shall we say? Tomorrowland imagines the future-ish. Fantasyland brings fairy tales to life. And Frontierland is a romanticized version of the American West, filled with log cabins, horses, and steamboats. Frontierland was uniquely special for Walt.

[00:06:39] He believed that this land would be one of the most popular since historically the Old West was very on trend for the 1950s. I can't believe you just said that. It's true, though. I'm sure it is. I mean, Davy Crockett. I mean, just the terms on trend. I can't imagine Walt going, well, tell me what's on trend today, boys. Well, you know what's on trend? Frontierland. Okay. Whoa.

[00:07:03] For this reason, he had his hands in a lot of the design and he wanted this land to be both immersive and accurate. And a key element in making Disneyland successful was having money. Which is why, especially in the early days, there were a lot of like really prominent sponsors like Kodak, Chicken of the Sea, Monsanto, and Pendleton. But Disneyland's relationship with Pendleton was unique. And as I said before, historically important.

[00:07:31] Pendleton would, I'm going to do this every time. Pendleton Woolen Mills was founded in 1863 in Pendleton, Oregon. Thomas Lister Kaye, the founder, arrived in the state of Oregon in 1863. As a weaver by trade, he had immigrated to the U.S. from England and had worked in textile mills on the East Coast. Now, along with many other Americans at the time, Kaye made his way out west and was eager to put his weaving skills to work.

[00:08:02] In 1889, he opened his first mill, the Thomas Kaye Woolen Mills in Salem, Oregon. And at the time, his daughter, Fannie Kaye, learned the family business and she soon took over. At the same time, she married C.P. Bishop, who was a skilled retailer. Now, this marriage became a key turning point for the Kaye family business as it combined the weaving and textile skills of the K's with the retail experience of the Bishops.

[00:08:29] And this combination of skills were then passed on to their three sons, who in 1909 purchased a defunct woolen mill in Pendleton, Oregon. They revived the mill and retained the original name Pendleton Woolen Mills. The city of Pendleton was located in eastern Oregon, which was ideal for this kind of business due to the plentiful sheep farms and local railway, which allowed for them to easily ship their products across the region.

[00:08:57] Not only was the Pendleton Woolen Mills famous for woolen blankets and clothing inspired by Native American designs, but the mill actually produced woolen trade blankets for the local Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Nez Perce Native American tribes. Okay. Those are multiple tribes. There wasn't one. No, those were four different American tribes. Nice. The company began to expand across the Pacific Northwest and eventually made their way into California.

[00:09:25] By the mid-20th century, Pendleton was the brand of rugged American masculinity. Wow. We're talking cowboys and campers and outdoorsmen and ranchers, that kind of thing. Like what Carhartt would be today for the upper blue collar class. Basically, yeah. Now, you've probably seen these signature plaid shirts and maybe you've even worn one. But in the late 1950s, these iconic shirts reached beyond cowboys and Indians.

[00:09:54] And once the trend made its way to California, Southern California specifically, they became the surf apparel and were available at department stores across the West like Sears, Montgomery Wards, and Macy's. All the best. Yes. Surfers all over California would be seen wearing swim trunks, no undershirt, and a Pendleton flannel. Now, an interesting tidbit about Pendleton is that this style became so iconic to surfing and surfers

[00:10:23] that a very well-known surfer band actually originally called themselves the Pendletones. Can you guys guess what California surfer band this may have been? Beach Boys. I'll give you a hint. Go ahead and click on the link. So it's not the Beach Boys then, I guess. All right. I'm going to close my eyes. If I can play it without... There's probably going to be an ad.

[00:10:50] Well, first of all, you put it in the subject, so you can't just click on it. I'm a nerd. Okay. I didn't put it in. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's the Beach Boys. It is the Beach Boys. Damn, I'm too good. I still want to give it away so fast. No, why would you? I would have guessed the same, but... I've never seen the music video for this. Apparently, that's the music video. Yeah, so the Beach Boys... Hey, hold on. We're doing this now for a second.

[00:11:24] I'm taking up the ball rations. I'm the Beach Boys sleeping. Yeah, it's... I don't know. They're just being good. They're being the Beatles is what they're being. Yeah. Like, here's how it starts, by the way. It's this girl just bouncing a ball and she moves her leg over the ball every once in a while. Sweet moves. It's like, what are we... Whatever, dude. Anyway, Beach Boys. The Beach Boys was, you know, not in the best place.

[00:11:54] So, yeah, the Beach Boys. And this doesn't quite make it into this history because it didn't really fit properly. But the Beach Boys were also a big part of Disneyland. That could be its own show. They have a whole backstory with Disneyland. But also this backstory with Pendleton, which I thought was really interesting. That their name was almost the Pendletones. And actually, also nothing to do with this. But I did find out that they were only called the Beach Boys because when their first album came out, the label changed their name. Really?

[00:12:23] From the Pendletones to the Beach Boys and it just stuck. I love that. So, back when that... I don't get this. Yeah. Back when that just happened. Like, people... Yeah. Like, music back then was way more of a marketable commodity. Yeah. You know, than like expressive art forms or whatever. I was listening to, I don't know, some clip on TikTok. And this is way out of field, but I don't care.

[00:12:46] They're talking about like Jamaican ska and the period between like ska and then you had rub-a-dub, basically. And then you went into dub. And the guy was like... Basically, the period of like true Jamaican ska was like 60... I don't know, 4 to 66. And that was it. And then once like the DJs on the island... Because they ruled everything musically. So, whatever was hip, the DJs knew about it.

[00:13:15] And if it was not hip, it was immediately dropped. And immediately ska was just... Two years. It's done. They went on to rub-a-dub and then they went on to more like the reggae that we know. But... Yeah. It's kind of weird. So, it's like they just... It's just commodifying, you know, art way more than it is, you know, today. So, was that considered first wave? Yeah. Yeah. First wave ska and like the early... The mid-60s or whatever. It was third wave.

[00:13:44] Yeah. Well, and then the guy made a joke. He's like, man, even back then they knew you could only really... It only takes so much of ska and then you had to move on. Dang. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead. All right. Music history, everybody. Right. So, now what does all of this have to do with Disneyland? Nothing. We just have nothing else to talk about. Right. Well... Whoa. As Disneyland was being built, Walt Disney extended a personal invitation to Pendleton to

[00:14:14] be retail partners in the park. And Walt was a fan of Pendleton's philosophy, this kind of fleeced fashion, you know, they call it vertical manufacturing, which included ownership of their own sheep flocks and scouring facilities, which I don't know what that is, but that sounds weird and scary. Sounds clean. Maybe. Yes. More importantly, however, Walt believed that Pendleton was a staple of the Old West

[00:14:40] and thought that the brand would not only fit into the atmosphere, but also lend a hand in making the land more immersive to guests. The invitation was accepted by Pendleton, but it was also unique to them. This was the first time the company would be selling direct to consumer. This was their very first and at the time, their only retail store. Now, previously, they had only sold through catalog to customers or wholesale to department stores.

[00:15:05] So while Walt and Pendleton both saw the vision for this store in Frontierland, it was a risk as it was an unproven business model, but Pendleton was all in. The store was called Pendleton Woolen Mills Dry Goods Store. Say that three times fast. That three times fast. No, not that part. No. And it was centrally located between the Golden Horseshoe and the then present Frontier Arcade,

[00:15:33] which honestly sounds so much cooler than the just retail store that's there now. But anyway, the shop's massive storefront complete with a porch was Frontier style shop that sold real Pendleton flannel shirts, jackets, and blankets. But this wasn't just branding. This store was part of the Frontierland narrative. You walked through dusty streets. You saw cowboys on horseback. And then, without leaving the story, bought a shirt that looked like it belonged to a ranter

[00:16:01] you just watched outside. Yeah. So Pendleton sold their normal merchandise at the Dry Goods Store, but they also made some exclusive items just for the park. And these were tagged with unique labels that read Pendleton for Disneyland. Hmm. Now, of course, finding these items on eBay today is probably a collector's dream. But at the time, they served as a seamless connection between this sort of fantasy and reality. The Pendleton merchandise was more than just a souvenir. It was a costume.

[00:16:31] It was an identity. And honestly, we could probably call it the first ever Disney bounding. Now, imagine buying a shirt that feels like a part of the world you just stepped out of. That's not just shopping. That's storytelling through commerce. The shop was incredibly successful. And what Disney and Pendleton did here was ahead of its time. Now, long before brands like Harry Potter or Marvel or Star Wars figured it out, these two pioneered the idea of this immersive retail.

[00:16:59] The idea that buying a product can feel like becoming a part of the story. And today, they actually have a name for this. It's called experiential branding. But in 1955, they didn't have a name for it. They just knew that it worked. So I don't know, man. Experiential branding. Experiential branding. It makes me want to vomit. Yeah. I just, I don't know, that level of capitalism. It's like, come on. Yeah. Well, let's start.

[00:17:27] We'll say it started with Walt and Pendleton. Sure. Let's do that. It turned retail space into an emotional space. And what's cool about the success of this store, too, is that Pendleton didn't lose its identity or family-oriented philosophy either. In fact, when you purchased an item in the store at Disneyland, they would ask for your zip code. And then they would then give credit for that purchase at Disneyland to whichever Pendleton retail outlet was closest to your zip code. Huh.

[00:17:57] So they were making sure that their local shops also benefited from these sales. Yeah. It's probably a way to appease the local or the retail shops by selling direct. Because when I was doing buying way back when, there was a hard thing to, you know, we had a wholesale department. And that was a hard thing to be able to describe to the customers. Like, yes, we also sell direct to homebrewers through our other shop, but we support you and the thing.

[00:18:27] And that's, you know, it was awkward to be put in that position sometimes. Because I feel like nowadays people kind of know that. Yeah. But that is a really nice concession to make for their retail people. You know, they don't have, they didn't have to do that. It was probably just felt like the right thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like a pretty decent kind of truly family owned company. Yeah. You really don't want to undercut all of the, the, the, the local businesses that have been running for a while. And they're like, oh, great. They set up a place in Disney. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:18:57] Well, we'll drop you. We're not going to, you know, we're not going to pick it up. Yeah. Because I'm sure by then the design was so ubiquitous, if that's the word, that there were probably a bunch of imitators out there. You could probably pick them up cheaper somewhere. Maybe not. I don't know. That's okay. There's a congruency between these two companies too. And so to take things a step further, the relationship between Pendleton and Disneyland

[00:19:21] share a real connection because the Pendleton brand for America, especially the West Coast at the time, it really meant something. This stood for heritage. It stood for craft, craftsmanship and American identity. And even eventually became a staple of the California surfer culture. And meanwhile, Disneyland also wasn't just a theme park. Its sheer existence was sort of shaping this national mythology about this past and present and fantasy.

[00:19:51] And it kind of set the tone for who Americans believed that they were or what they wanted to become. And so this partnership, I know, I really went on a limb here, but that's okay. You're feeling yourself and that's, you know. We're doing a thing. We're doing a thing. Just stick with me here. That's right. So this partnership worked really well because both brands were participating in a cultural, shared cultural story. I really went too far. Wow.

[00:20:18] What is wrong with a shared cultural story? Yeah, it's good. Damn. It's good. You're in a good mood today. Had to get it done. Yeah. Now, as time went on and Disneyland's success was obvious, Disney stopped renewing certain sponsorship contracts as they decided they no longer needed them or wanted them or whatnot. In the early 1990s, Eisner at the helm, Disneyland began to move away from selling non-Disney products.

[00:20:47] And they made this huge push for Disney branded merchandise. And this was the same time that they opened the Disney store at malls across America. There was a huge push. And for this reason, in April 1990, the Pendleton Woolen Mills dry goods store closed for good. Wow. The original doge, folks. Yeah, basically. Luckily, this partnership ended amicably.

[00:21:12] And you can actually still find Pendleton goods at the Bonanza Outfitters, which replaced the dry goods store. And in Ramon's House of Body Art in Cars Land. Oh, wow. Which also makes kind of sense. Yeah. Pendleton and Disneyland proved that a retail partnership can be more than a commercial transaction. It could extend the story. It could make the fantasy immersive. It also laid the groundwork for the modern theme park gift shop.

[00:21:39] Now think about Star Wars Land or Harry Potter World and how immersive those products are that you can buy. And this made the idea that retail can actually help guests become fully immersed in the story that they are actually experiencing. So this partnership was very important and historically significant. Sure. That's really cool. All of this. Like it's it. This is really cool to hear like the history there and in the real world and in Disney. I don't know.

[00:22:09] I don't know if this is the thing. But is this the place where you could buy like a bolt of cloth? Because I remember hearing a story somewhere about Lillian Disney buying all of her textiles through a store in Frontierland. It would make sense that it was there. Right. That's what I was thinking because I this whole time. I'm like, what was that story from? Like pop up in researching this. And I didn't see that anywhere. It may have been something else. I don't know.

[00:22:39] Interesting. You know, I didn't see that they sold actual like bolts of textile. But yes, I could see that they maybe would have done that. Sure, man. You got to bring some stuff in for the boss. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But yeah, I actually just really thought it was interesting. I'm glad we did it for this show because it's not exactly a full show topic. Like I kind of thought it would be, but it's cool. Okay. Yeah.

[00:23:09] All right. Good job, Tara. Thanks. All right. Well, let's dig into a little bit of this announcement here for the brand new Disney park, the brand new Disney destination in the Middle East, which is, I don't know, man. Seems weird to me. But we'll get into that. It's an untapped market. That's right. First of all, you know what? I got a little video we can play. It's kind of like a little hype video. So here's a little B-roll of Abu Dhabi. You know, it's okay.

[00:23:38] So this will give you a feel for it, right? So they have an F1 track. So this is the specific island, I believe, that they're on. A lot of waterways, a lot of ships, right? Big golf course. There's, you know, jet skis, big mosque there. You know, a lot of stuff, right? It's really big and pretty. Yeah. It's very big. There's, they're, they're doing this push in the Middle East to like greenify the area, you know, and like do big resort.

[00:24:06] Because all I have is, you know, sand and stuff out there. I mean, I'm just, you know, being facetious. But that seems like what it is because everything in, everything in the world is expanding out there. I mean, they just create tracts of land and they're planting a bunch of stuff. And they're, they're really trying to like make it, you know, blossom way more than it, way more than it is, you know, in, in the past. So here is a, it's a ceremony announcing the announcements.

[00:24:31] Of course, Iger and Damaro flew out to Abu Dhabi for this celebration. So here's a little video about that. A little sacrifice on their part. My goodness. Yeah, I know. Right. There's Mickey and Minnie. Mickey. And those are the people in charge of the project, the sheiks or whatever with the Chad beards. There's Iger looks tired. He just looks jet lagged. Been in the country for seven minutes.

[00:25:00] Damaro looks fresh faced. He's ready to go. He's ready to be the next CEO. Yeah. So what they're doing now is they're walking down this big, like, I don't know, runway or whatever to these big Mickey ears. And, you know, and I believe this is going to be the site of where it is because there's water behind it and it's going to be a whole thing. So they're shaking hands and they pose for the photo and that's and then they leave. And that's basically, you know, the little teaser video.

[00:25:29] And then there was a whole celebration. There was a whole ceremony that we don't get to see the full details of. But this is a recap of it. There were fireworks. You can hear. Conductors with a big band. These are apparently stars. I don't know who they are. You know, full concert. Singing performances. Many, many multitudes of fireworks.

[00:25:59] Fountains. They pulled like fountains out there and did like a, you know, little fountain show. Very passionate. Everything's very passionate. Idina Menzel. Is that who that was? And then so right here, there's a drone. These are so they have a bunch of drones in the shape of a Disneyland castle of a Disney castle. Wow. Those are drones? Those are drones. That's crazy. Wow. Yeah.

[00:26:23] So you have, it's a great shot because it's, it's, you know, there's the drones are flanked by these bursting fireworks. And it looks awesome. And then the drones kind of change. And then above it says Disney Abu Dhabi. And then there's this kind of like floral crystal looking design coming out in place of the castle. So we'll kind of get to that in a little bit. But that's, that's the basic thing.

[00:26:51] This is the video that was put out, right? That you could find on like the Disney site and whatever. There's really no secret about our approach. We keep moving forward. And of course they had to just dust off a wall. With the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world. In Disney's 102 year history, there have been many defining moments and countless achievements. Today, we celebrate another thrilling moment.

[00:27:19] The creation of a spectacular new Disney theme park resort coming to Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is a place where heritage meets innovation. A place where we preserve our past while designing the future. Bringing a Disney theme park resort to Yass Island Abu Dhabi marks a historic milestone in our journey as a global family destination.

[00:27:45] The seventh Disney theme park resort destination represents a new frontier in theme park ambitions. Our resort in Abu Dhabi will be the most advanced and interactive destination in our entire portfolio. The location of our park is incredibly unique. It's anchored by a beautiful waterfront, which will allow us to tell our stories in completely new ways. Ultimately, this project will be a celebration of what's possible when creativity and progress come together.

[00:28:15] What we are creating with Disney and Abu Dhabi is a whole new world of imagination. An experience that will inspire generations across the region and the world. This collaboration represents a powerful vision of Disney's unmatched legacy in storytelling. And Mirai's commitment to bringing world-class entertainment to our guests.

[00:28:40] Abu Dhabi's vision for the future is to create a legacy for generations to come. Disneyland Abu Dhabi will be authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati. An oasis of extraordinary Disney entertainment at this crossroads of the world. It will bring to life our timeless characters and stories in many new ways,

[00:29:04] becoming a source of joy and inspiration for the people of this vast region to enjoy for generations to come. There you go, folks. That's the sizzle reel. Interesting. That is the exact same line he used for Shanghai. Is it? Shanghai Disneyland will be Disney but distinctly Chinese. Well, I mean, you know, there you go. We have peas in the chat backing you up there. There we go. Yeah.

[00:29:34] Like that was the exact same line, but he put a different country there. Well, you know, look, he's tired of what you want. So as you heard one of the men say, the park is going to be in something called Yas Island, which is very funny and common parlance. But it doesn't mean, you know, what you think it means. Yas Island is an island in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, a short 19 hour flight from the Bay Area. No.

[00:30:01] Now, in popular Internet parlance, the word Yas is used in place of the word yes, but with more feeling, more style, more excitement. All of which you might be feeling when you arrive at Yas Island, but only if you fit a certain demographic, which maybe we'll get to later. I don't know. The island of Yas gets its name from the Arabian Bani Yas Tribal Confederation in the UAE, the United Arab Emirates.

[00:30:28] This tribe is headed up by a member of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, which I believe was he was in the video, but his name is very long. He has a bunch of titles and the name and it was just it's too long. And as such, he has the right to veto any federal legislation put forth by the government. So he got that juice. This man got that juice. He he's the ruling family of Abu Dhabi. He's head of the tribe in the area, which is tribal confederation. So he has the power over the the the other tribes in the area.

[00:30:57] He's got power over Abu Dhabi. And, you know, he's he's just he's the guy. He's the man. You're saying if if I need somebody to import diet. Coke to this this place, he's the guy to talk to. I guess so. Yeah. The island has about 10 square miles of landmass, making it a bit larger than the city of San Francisco for context. It's entirely manmade and it's the second largest manmade island in the world.

[00:31:26] Second only to the Flevopolder in the Netherlands, which, by the way, has a total area of three hundred and seventy five square mile. So that's bigger than the island that they made for Hong Kong Disneyland. There you go. Yeah. Announced in 2006, the project to build the actual island was head manned by Aldar properties in the UAE and costs about 40 billion dollars. Wow.

[00:31:54] Most of the manmade islands in the area in the, you know, in the Middle East are actually made through land reclamation, which is a process that involves dredging sand from the Persian and Arabian Gulf floors kind of out in the ocean a little bit farther than it's trucked over and sprayed and vibro compacted into a shape, you know, whatever island they want. So, wow. I don't know if you guys remember way back when, I don't know, it was 10 years ago, whatever.

[00:32:19] There's some big kerfuffle about about some big land developer making artificial islands in the shape of like a palm tree. You remember them? I actually don't. No. Okay. Well, anyway, you can like shape the islands and do stuff like that. So that's how they would do that normally, which sounds wild. It's very, very time consuming and very expensive. So to build an island, to create your own island takes a long time and it's a lot of money.

[00:32:46] However, Yas Island was once part of mainland Abu Dhabi and it was freed by carving out a canal, basically slicing it off of mainland Abu Dhabi and then like carving the other half off. And so it's just basically like a large sandbar pre 2009. There was nothing there. It was just sand. Seeing photos of this place is truly wild. It's flat and at sea level.

[00:33:14] And so I had, did I find those photos somewhere? I couldn't find them. I tried to look for them. And I have a video a little bit later that will show kind of what it was, you know, pre construction, but it's crazy. I mean, just think of the flattest, you know, brownest area possible. And that was, that was this sandbar. It was crazy.

[00:33:35] Development of the island happened in three phases where phase one happened to line up with the F1 Etihad Airways Grand Prix in 2009. It involved the completion of not only a racetrack, but seven hotels and a golf course, which seems like a short amount of time to be announcing in 2006. And then open in 2009 to have seven hotels and a golf course and an F1 racetrack.

[00:34:03] But you also have plumbing, sewage lines, communication, infrastructure. Yeah. Yeah. Wild. So here, here is a video. I do have a video of, uh, it's a little teaser reel, I guess, of, uh, of the construction documentation of the, of the area. And this is back in 2010 and it's very 2010 dated where it's back when Google started letting people use Google earth images and like videos for free.

[00:34:32] And everything had the, the earth and then the zoom in to Google earth to wherever the place was. That's exactly what's happening right here. So that's yes. Island. And you can kind of see, so this is made, this is Abu Dhabi and this is mainland Abu Dhabi right here. And they just went, and it's traced around, made it an Island. And they just carved it up. So look at this. It's like barely an Island. There's nothing. I think this might be water. It's just dirty from construction. And then there's water over here and it's just nothing.

[00:35:02] I mean, yes, it's leveled. It's leveled for, you know, for, for construction, but, um, this is the, they're actually building the Ferrari world. I think is, is going on right here that also tied in with the F1 thing. If I'm, if I'm correct, I don't know. This looks more complicated than building in a swamp in Florida. Yeah. I don't think we need to hear any more about it, but that's what's going on. Like, that's what it's like to build there, especially in the early days. Like there was not a whole lot going on.

[00:35:32] You know, I have a legitimate fear. Look at this. Look at this. Yeah. What's your fear? Just of, of roller coasters in other countries. Oh yeah, absolutely. Like, and it's not even that I trust America because I don't, but at least I know that I know that we have like, uh, things in place to make sure that they're safe. And I don't know that about other countries. We don't have those anymore. Well, I know we don't anymore.

[00:36:01] So probably won't be going on any roller coasters. OSHA is gone. Yeah. The EPA is gone. Um, we definitely have a higher building standard, I think, than, than a lot of other places. So I definitely agree with you. I don't know that I would go there either. I mean, I like, I know I'm not going to go for sure. Like seeing them build that roller coaster. I was like, oh no, no, no, no. Look at this. It's just not, it's just flat. It's nuts. The whole thing is, is, is wild. But anyway, that's, what's going on, uh, in, in 2006 through 2009.

[00:36:32] Right. And it was based off of this project for the F1 and the future plans that were, you know, in the three phases that the location was named the world's leading tourism project at the world travel awards in 2009. So they, they, they had, they had some, some push going forward. Hmm. Ferrari world theme park actually opened in 2010. So it was open to, to, uh, you know, attendees of the F1 order, but it was open to the public

[00:37:01] in 2010, followed closely by Yass water world in 2013, which by the way, here, I should pull the videos of Yass water world. This place is nuts, dude. I'll, well, we'll, we'll, we'll talk about it in a second. Uh, Yass water world, 2013 and the Yass mall in 2014. Then they added Warner brothers movie world in 2018 and indoor climbing facility in 2019.

[00:37:30] And in 2021, the Eddie had arena and the Yass bay waterfront were both open to the public as well. And recently they got sea world. Yes. Island in may of 2023 featuring five indoor levels of water animal fun. So you have four theme parks there with over 160 places to eat dozens of hotels, vibrant nightlife. Sounds, sounds cool. Right? I mean, this is a lot to do.

[00:38:01] Uh, D D D D D D D. Now, if all of this sounds exciting, there's more. What if you could live there right on Yass Island, be in the middle of the nutty, crazy world that is Yass Island? Well, you can, Eric. Wait, wait, I can. You can. You specifically. There are currently about 14,000 homes on Yass Island or housing units, I guess is what

[00:38:30] they call them. Since there's a wide variety available from apartments to condos to mansion. And of course, you know, I'll take a mansion close to Dubai. Well, wait, I got a cost for you. Oh no. In 2022, the world was treated to Yass Park Gate, which is the most recent housing development to be announced for Yass Island. It's a Mediterranean style gated community with move-ins scheduled for 2026. So they're still building.

[00:38:58] Now I found homes on the island and not specifically in Yass Park Gate, but, uh, you know, different building areas or whatever. And they range from about a million dollars U.S. all the way to $53 million U.S. for the mansions. And that's about where I stopped looking because I suddenly felt ill and had to lay down. Wow. Huh. Now it's, it's hard to describe the mix of homes on this island.

[00:39:25] Many are kind of what you expect, like new construction looking, not very personable, but there are some interesting projects that are going on inside Yass Island, like something called the Sustainable City. And this is one is specifically called Yass Island. So there's like three or four different locations throughout the Middle East, uh, the sustainable city. And this one's particularly for, you know, for Yass Island. It's an eco-conscious community that prioritizes sustainability consisting of condos and townhomes

[00:39:53] arranged in 10 clusters with 272 condos and 240 townhomes. It focuses on a walkable city. Residents will have access to their own parks, lakes, plural, and a community garden. In addition, what's that? Jet skis. Maybe. Okay. In addition, communal battery powered buggies and bikes will be provided.

[00:40:19] Solar panels covering parking structures and roofs will provide 50% of the city's renewable energy. Now, apartments for, for, uh, for the sustainable city started about 500 grand U.S., which doesn't sound too bad. Oh. Taryn specifically. Yeah. Uh, let's see if I can find out. Going to the UAE. The sustainable city. I don't know about that.

[00:40:47] So it's not, it's not particularly done yet, but they do have kind of a, they, of course they have a video as well and it's done, the video's done really well. And it kind of like, um, so it's basically, you think of it as a, as a rectangle. Okay. And then you have the units on one side, you don't say the other, and then down the middle, there's a strip of green where the lakes are going to be in the communal parks or whatever.

[00:41:11] And then at one end of the, of the rectangle is where like the community garden is. And some of the more communal communal stuff is anyway, you get the idea. It's a city. It's a city. It's a lot of green. So it's 4.2 million square feet. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So I don't know, maybe, maybe my, maybe my, I don't know, 10, maybe 10 square miles is whatever. Who knows?

[00:41:37] Anyway, handover starts a quarter 2025 and, uh, it seems pretty cool. Solar panels on homes and parking rooftops, use of recycled materials and low carbon products, car-free residential clusters. And they're really trying to make, you know, trying to make a thing out of it. Right. I had a boss, um, years ago who, uh, left the U S and went to work at Cleveland clinic, Dubai. Okay. Wow.

[00:42:06] And he invited me to come with him because they were able to move to Dubai to help run Cleveland clinic, Dubai. And, um, I, I'm sure yes. Island is a little, a little up on the outskirts. I don't know, but, um, I think it's like an hour, a little over an hour. So from Dubai, it's like 15 minutes from Abu Dhabi airport proper. Okay.

[00:42:36] Yeah. But I could live close enough to do this. Could have. See, there you go. Yeah. Well, Hey man. So the, the, so that's that right. And reading more about the scope of just some of the buildings on Yass Island is pretty crazy. Like the Yass mall, like I mentioned before, it has a leasing space for 400 retail stores. Plus parking for 12,000 cars. Why haven't they filled all that up yet? I didn't, I don't know that they don't.

[00:43:05] I'm just saying like, that's, that's what it opened with is 400 leasing 400 space. Get a fossil store in there right now. And it sounds crazy. And you know, I don't know, I don't know what it looks like in there, but everything is indoors. Most everything is indoors, of course, because it's like a million degrees there. It's worse than Vegas. Yeah. Yeah. Ferrari world back to that is the world's largest indoor theme park, which I didn't know about it.

[00:43:29] And it's at the core is the unique 50 meter high red octopus shaped roof, which required 12,370 tons of steel to build. And we saw that in the video a little bit. It's pretty recognizable when you see photos of a Yass Island. If you, you know, I'm sure everyone's Googling it, Googling it and looking it up. That big red splotchy thing. That's, that's Ferrari world. That was the first, the first thing to be built there. Pull your car over right now. If you're listening on your way to work, Google this, you want to see it.

[00:43:59] Yeah. Yeah. Um, so Yass water world. Now Yass water world opened with 43 rides in it. 43. That's more than like Walt Disney world's magic kingdom. Yeah. That's wild. And it was recently expanded growing capacity to nearly 20%. So they have over 60 rides at this stupid theme park now. And it looks, so there are a few videos of it.

[00:44:27] Um, so I'll just show you real fast. I'll just like flip through some, um, the scope of this. I mean, it, it, it massive. It's almost like a, like a subway channel. You can probably take one slide all the way across the park and then just go, you know, go to work or whatever. It seems crazy. There's roller coasters in it and they twist and turn. The roller coasters go in between the, the, the tubes for the rides.

[00:44:54] And they're just, it's massive project. It is a massive project. That's insane. Yeah. I'm trying to find some cool, some cool shots, but I mean, you can just see in this still how tall that is. Yeah. Look at that. Oof. No. Couldn't do it. What else can you do on Yas Island besides be too poor to go?

[00:45:19] Well, if you're in the virtual world, Yas Island is in the metaverse. There is a Yas Island game within the larger umbrella game of Roblox. Really? Wow. Apparently. Yeah. So if you. Alice wants to play Roblox. I know she does. And it is not a very safe space for ungoverned because anybody can just start a server and make games. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of nefarious people on the specifically Roblox.

[00:45:47] And I'm not, she's not allowed to play Roblox. So I shouldn't send her a gift card for her birthday. Yes. No, absolutely not. So if you want to go to Yas Island to, you know, either, either when the Disney park opens or just because it sounds fun or whatever, there are actually multiple theme park packages. So I looked them all up.

[00:46:08] Now, to be fair to, before we jump into the money portion of, of your visit to Yas Island, some places might add a tourism fee to your tab. And that tourism fee is 6%. Oh. On top of a 10%, you know, gratuity or whatever. So just, you know, some places do, some places don't. Okay. Your mileage may vary. So let's say you wanted to go to Warner Brothers land for a day, Eric. Okay. Okay.

[00:46:38] Sounds cool. Let's pretend. Yeah. That would run you 657 AED or in case you're not up on your exchange rate, 180 bucks US. That's not bad. It's not bad, right? If you want a two park ticket. So if you want to go to Warner Brothers and then Ferrari world, that's about 250 bucks. Three parks is $300 and all four parks is about 350 US. For a day. Wow. For, for a day. Yeah.

[00:47:08] Okay. How could you do all of that in a day? Well, you couldn't. Huh. But that's not bad. I mean, you know, each individual day. It's similar to what we've got here. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I was really surprised. I guess I, I guess I didn't know what I expected. I guess I didn't know if I expected more or, or, or less. And honestly, it wouldn't have surprised me either way. But what really surprised me is how kind of similar it was. Yeah.

[00:47:35] Of course they have annual passes that offer a ton of stuff. So I do have a little, um, a little PDF of the annual passes actually, but you know what? Let's take a break real fast. We'll come back. I want to, I want to tell you guys what the annual passes are. That the annual passes for yes Island and the annual passes for Disney parks. Very wildly. Oh, it is insane. It is absolutely insane. So anyway, uh, hang on everybody. It's ears up. We'll be right back.

[00:48:09] And now back to the show that ignites your dream wish of imaginations and magical color wonderment of forever. Ears up. Hey, thanks for hanging on everybody. Appreciate you, man. It's 81 in this studio. Yeah. It is warm. It's roasting. It's only going to get worse, man. It's only going to get worse. I still have snow on my driveway. Oh, you're lucky. Hey, we can move there. Into Eric's driveway. Into Eric's driveway? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:48:38] The easiest way to not get snow in your driveway is how people live in it. That's true. Saying. But you know, what's going to help the summer here, everybody is the 21st amendment beers. Specifically, what I'm drinking right now is the hell or high watermelon wheat beer. It is very, very crisp. Very, very watermelon-y. Perfect for these summer days. Just like all of the 21st amendment beers that you can find anywhere right now. They have a, they, Sully's really good at doing variety packs.

[00:49:07] So, you know, there's a lot of variety packs that are floating around there. And if you can find one with hell or high watermelon specifically or anything, but really hell or high watermelon is the go-to summer move out here in the Bay Area. And it should be wherever you are too. So check them out. 21st-amendment.com. Ask your good beer store to bring in more 21st amendment and you can try it all. And I highly, highly recommend it. Cool. I highly recommend it. Reca. Amendment.

[00:49:36] Amendment it. Are you talking about that? I tried. Yeah, I tried, man. Sorry. I don't get it. No. Well, maybe. Um, okay. Annual passes. So if you want to, for whatever reason, you know, maybe you live near the area. I don't know. And you want an annual pass to Yas Island. If you want an annual Yas. Heck yeah. Heck yes. Who wouldn't? Heck yes. I don't know. So there's three, three different levels.

[00:50:05] There's the silver Yas annual pass, the gold, and then the diamond. Now the diamond will run you three, is it 32.95 per year? And that's AED. And that is, Oh, did I not do the conversion? I thought I did. It's not bad. Let's hear them say $897. So we're talking like knots. Yeah. Yeah. But here's what you get with it.

[00:50:33] You get something called a limited with quick pass, which so year round access to the Yas theme parks. You get 25% off dining, 25% off shopping. Wow. 25% off the exclusive discount on family and friends tickets. 25% discount on paid experiences.

[00:50:57] You get preferred parking, one free guest ticket voucher, one free in park photo voucher, stroller and locker discounts, 25% off print photography. Dang. You get a 25% discount on in-park games packages. Those are for the theme parks. And then for the island benefits, you get early access to, you know, different things. 50% discount at Yas Beach, which maybe is to like, you know, rent a cabana or whatever.

[00:51:28] Anyway, a lot of stuff like that. Preferred parking at the mall, which by the way, that's what you got to do. No one's trying to walk. I hate walking two minutes in my local mall in the sun in the summertime. You kidding me? There's no way you're going to catch me in the Middle East walking 12 miles. You know, like didn't get VIP parking or whatever. So yeah. So if you're in the area, man, I mean, 900 bucks a year for all that, you know, that's pretty good. So I wanted to look at like hotel rooms and stuff.

[00:51:57] So they have a bunch of different hotel rooms. There's too many to list. I'm not, because I'm not a travel agency. I'm not going to sit here and list all the, you know, frigate. They have like a Ramada and a residence and a Hilton and a Marriott and a whatever. Right. But on something called Centro Yass Island is a hotel for three nights with three park passes. $1,300. Wow. Yeah. Total. That's your package. That's out the door. Affordable.

[00:52:28] Except for the like plane fare. But well, yeah, too affordable, to be honest. And on finally, so that's Yass Island. Okay. So now it brings us up to today, which on May 7th, two days ago, the Walt Disney Company announced it's entering a partnership deal with Yass Island to open the seventh Disney destination. Mural, the development company that runs the parks on Yass Island, they run, they developed all the parks. They run all the parks on Yass Island.

[00:52:57] Mural entered an agreement with the Disney Company to construct and manage this new park, much in the same way they did with SeaWorld and the other brands that are located on the island. Disney will design and create this new park and then turn everything over to Mural for construction and operations. And I did read that Disney will have select cast members in key roles that have like a residency there at the parks to make sure that things are kind of like up to the Disney standard.

[00:53:25] But for the most part, these aren't cast members. They're, you know, they are employees of Mural, I would imagine. Now, why Arab Emirates? Why Abu Dhabi? Well, apparently the UAE is located within a four hour flight from one third of the world's population. Wow. Yeah. So it is a heavily targeted area for tourism. Wow.

[00:53:54] And that's what they want this to be. The folks at Mural, the folks at Abu Dhabi and Yass Island are specifically developing Yass Island to become a tourist destination of the world. Oh. Yeah. Which is, I mean, super affordable. I mean, I can kind of understand it. So I just, I guess I'm a little confused because I'm looking at the island on Google Maps and like, where are they fitting?

[00:54:20] I mean, it looks like it's all taken up except for one little spot near Warner Brothers world. I don't know, man. It seems like wild. Yeah, it does. Now, this is the first Disney park in the Middle East, of course. Back in 2011, you might remember there was talk in the rumor mill of a theme park planned in Israel. But this turned out to be apparently a misunderstanding because an investment firm that was connected

[00:54:46] with the Disney company had announced plans to fund a park in Israel, but it was never specifically said that this was a Disney branded theme park. So the Disney news mill does what it does best and went up to a lot of inferences and was like, oh, there's going to be a new Disney theme park. And Disney had to come out and be like, we are not building a theme park in Israel. Are you crazy? Yeah. But apparently the announcement of this park and plans for this took about 10 years to work through.

[00:55:16] Wow. Which is kind of crazy. Wow. There's an estimated opening window. So the Disney company has not announced anything yet. There is no official announcement, but I did find because a lot of these development sites want to have some good information on their partner firm. Our partner is in charge of building this thing and they told us this or whatever, right? There's just a bunch of stuff going on.

[00:55:45] So I was able to find on a website somewhere that mural plans on opening the Disney park between 2032 and 2033. Now that is nowhere. I have looked at it. There's no information on that anywhere except this little weird website that I found. So there you go. You heard it here. You heard it here folks first. Nobody knows about opening windows more than me. It's hot. It's hot in here.

[00:56:12] But no official word, of course, as of yet. The budget for the project is said to be around $10 billion and that will be entirely funded by Mural. Now, I wonder if that includes the work from like the Disney Imagineers and stuff to design the whole thing or I wonder what the funding is. I wonder if Disney's, you know, sort of paying the salary for the Imagineers to design it or if Mural is like renting these people. I wonder, I wonder the intricacies of that. Yeah.

[00:56:42] Because Disney is designing everything and Mural's going to take it over. So building off of what DeMauro said about being cutting edge in the tech space, in that little video I played, he said that this is going to be the most technologically advanced Disney park ever, which pissed me off. Because at this point, you know, I used to kind of ride that line, I guess, between like, oh, don't change anything in Disneyland to like, I really want cool stuff. Bulldoze that thing. I'm going to tear Disneyland down and rebuild it.

[00:57:12] Just all LED screens. I don't know. I want more technology. Like these people are getting insane technology and we have projection mapping on water. It makes no sense. So maybe not that, right? Because, you know, people would explode. It'd be like scanners. But maybe just DCA. Do it to DCA. Rip DCA out to the, down to the studs and rebuild it with some better technology, man. This is insane.

[00:57:41] Why does Abu Dhabi get it? Well, because they can afford it. Well, yeah. So anyways, building off what DeMauro said, plans are afoot for incorporating cutting edge tech like real-time gaming engines, AI, and robotics to create some new things. This is all kind of based on what goes on within these other lands in Yas Island. One blurb I saw was the desire by Meryl to have a more, quote, modern castle. Okay. Yeah.

[00:58:11] So looking back at the concept art, which we saw, you see right here, this kind of like shimmering crystalline tower in the center of the park. And then also in the new design of like the, you know, the Disney, you know, before the movies or whatever, it's that blue background with the Disney castle and the little magic thing that goes across. That's not there. It's now this new kind of Middle Eastern stylized crystal beam.

[00:58:41] It's weird because it doesn't look at all Disney. It doesn't. No. But Iger said it will be distinctly Emirati. So maybe, maybe it's something. And yeah, it's, it seems weird. It seems weird as a castle, but that's, that's what it is. Also would not announce as a formal name for the park. So, so far everyone's just calling it Disneyland Abu Dhabi. Okay. That might change, you know, I don't know.

[00:59:06] Now, Meryl seems all ready to blend this tech that they have in these other parts of the parks with storytelling. And I wanted to learn a bit more about what they already do on Yes Island with all this tech stuff. So I poked around a bit at their SeaWorld park since that was their kind of newest edition to get a feel as to what Disney could, you know, possibly do. SeaWorld has a ride called Hyper Sphere 360, which is not something they made. It's the, you know, you can buy. It's like a thing, right? It's a catalog.

[00:59:36] Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they, they bill it as a dome ride theater. It seems amazing. I have a video of it. Of course. It seats 80 people in a circle under a dome, which is covered in LED screens. Okay. Floor to ceiling dome. The bottom, everyone's seated in and they're harnessed, clipped in. The floor drops away to reveal even more screens.

[01:00:04] So all of these, all of these 80 people are in the, they're on a ring and the ring has an arm off of one side to like hold it into place. So as you, you know, go through the ocean or whatever, the, the ring can tilt and dip and raise and lower. And you have screens all over the place, all over.

[01:00:27] It is 75 million pixels in total blasting two times 6k led tech in your face. Whatever that means. I don't know, but it's a lot. Numbers go up. It means good. The seats can tilt, rotate around, and they also have speakers built into the seats offering 4k effects. So here's a video of the dome theater ride hypersphere 360. Wow.

[01:00:57] I mean, watch, just watch some of this. So that's, that's like an animation of how the, how the thing moves, right? 60 degree tilt. That's pretty cool. Huh. And this is just this like hyperspace sort of thing. So it makes people think that they're, that they can be floating in the ocean with the whales. Mm-hmm. Right? 45 audio channels. That's so much definition on your audio. 5D effect. Now they're just like cruising through like, you know, uh,

[01:01:26] They're just making up D's. Up to six revolutions a minute. That's pretty fast. I think. Might be too fast. Yeah. It's only every 10 seconds. I guess. Yeah. So I guess the seats are on, on a rail. So the seats can, can go in 360 and then the whole contraption can tilt at the same time. Yeah. Isn't that genius? Isn't that nuts? That's wild.

[01:01:52] So of course this one, best new product attraction installation for amusement parks and visitor attractions at Melanelac 2004 best dark or media based attraction at the park world excellence awards 2023. And then the brass ring award in 2023 for the best new product, major ride or attraction at a cost of more than three USD million dollars. Wow. It's an expensive, uh, thing, dude. Screens and a spinny. Wow.

[01:02:21] Yeah. Yeah, dude. So stuff like this is in, that would be massive in Disneyland. That would be amazing. I mean, it'll never happen, but like that kind of stuff is wild. So just getting into the parks itself is a forward push by tech. Mural leveraged facial recognition technology to create something called face pass, not fast pass, face pass, a completely contactless payment solution that houses your tickets.

[01:02:51] Your hotel information, your hotel information, your payment information, parking, anything you need. And apparently they did this, um, once the pandemic hit when there was a need for when they reopen. I don't know if they even shut down, but there was a need for more contactless, uh, you know, transactional means. Right. Yeah. So they developed this app and then now it's just what it is.

[01:03:14] So you scan your face in this like face scanning, John, and then you have one app that manages your entire life digitally while you're, while you're there. Wild. I mean, universal does the face recognition thing, which I thought was really weird. You it's, it's like when you, I mean, you know what it, it was like at Disneyland where you

[01:03:40] walked up, here's our ticket for the next three days, or you've got your annual pass where you've got your, your, your facial recognition thing on there, but there's a person that handles all that stuff. Hmm. And they're like, yeah, it looks vaguely like you. Okay. Come on in. Now it's a, a camera that they're like, okay, stand still for a minute. All right. You're in. And when you go to the other park, they do it again. And you're like, oh, here's my ticket.

[01:04:09] Oh no, you don't need that. It's all facial recognition. Yeah. That's exactly this. I wonder if it's the same concept. Yeah. I think you can, you can get it for different things. Not station clients, but same actual, same soft. Same tech. Yeah. And I know that they have like certain, um, time limits on, on your photo. Like they're going to delete things after a while. So they don't quote. Yeah. That's what they're saying is they're going to.

[01:04:39] So here's a quote from tomorrow on tech. He goes, quote, anytime we have the opportunity to build from the ground up with as much change in the tech space and as much advantage that the tech space offers us right now, we're going to go after that full force. In doing so, it will give us an opportunity to tell our stories in a more immersive ways and more flexible and dynamic ways in ways that Walt probably dreamed of back in 1955. Probably.

[01:05:09] Yeah. Probably. Probably. He did dream about it. There's one thing, man. I just, I, I, we just, can we leave Walt alone? I think we need to stop putting his stupid speech, his opening day speech into, into marketing. We need to stop quoting him every chance we get. I, I don't care anymore. I can't, I don't care. It's just, it's so much of a crutch. Yeah. Be creative or don't. We're going to, we're going to violate your privacy rights. Walt said, said this back in 1938.

[01:05:39] Well, before Disneyland. Well, I think that. You know, I wish. One day I want to be microchipped. That's what Walt said, or he would have probably. So, and then tomorrow was saying again in the video talking about, you know, there's a lot of water out in there and in Yas Island, because it's an island, but it's going to allow them to tell stories in ways that they never have been able to, you know, previously. We love stories.

[01:06:09] Yeah. And this quote I found, which I thought was interesting. It says from tomorrow again, he says, quote, we'll be able to pull water in and play with it in a completely new and unique way. So, you know, more than just world of color where you fan it out and you project a cartoon on it there. Who knows what they're going to be? I have no idea, but it sounds like they're going to just be moving water in from the bay to do stuff. And then they don't have to house it anywhere.

[01:06:38] They don't have to treat it as I do anything with it because they can just put it, you know what I mean? They can just put it away. Yeah. Release it back into the, into the john. So it sounds like there's going to be some interactive or some really big focus on water play and, you know, stuff like that. So we have no idea how these offerings are going to be changing with the addition of the Disney park to the lineup as far as like annual passes and stuff goes like, like, you know,

[01:07:05] you have the, the, the four park annual pass, but what's the addition of a five park? Because the Disney brand is so much more of a draw than, than sea world or, or Ferrari park or whatever. Right. Like this is a big crown jewel for, um, you know, these people to, to, to grab, but I would bet on a few things. Number one, the Disney park will be the most expensive park on offer when it does open. So each park is for the most part priced accordingly.

[01:07:34] Like the, the water park is a little bit less than the other parks and you know, there, there's a little fluctuation. It's not flat rate across all the parks individually. Okay. And it might even be excluded from certain offers and package deals. The way that current parks are bundled. I don't know. That'll be really interesting how they, how they price everything out. I also bet that Disney walks away from all this with some new ideas in tech for the other parks. Maybe we'll get some of it. I, you know, I don't know. It's almost world world's fair. Like yeah.

[01:08:03] If they want to be the most technological park. Yeah. Go ahead. UAE pay for us to get the best stuff. And then, uh, yeah, we're just gonna, Oh, excuse me. I'm going to take these plans and go back to Walt's apartments and look at them. That's right. That's right. Now, of course, the new park in location is not without its controversy. So I wanted to address those as well.

[01:08:31] Now, of course I would never do this on my own. Um, but, uh, apparently there are a lot of people online that are really upset about the location that Disney is choosing and the partnership that Disney is choosing to open this giant park, um, with. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about travel to the region. So if you're, if you're ever planning on going now, by the time the Disney park opened, things might be different because there are things in the region, as far as the way the region

[01:09:01] is, um, sort of, I don't know, redefining its judicial system. Like I guess, um, things could be very different in, you know, six, eight years or whatever. But if you're planning on going now, there's a lot of stuff that you should really be aware of travel to the region of Abu Dhabi is flagged by a kind of a lot of governments as a place to exercise extreme caution in according to smart traveler.gov, which is a site in Australia.

[01:09:30] They state that quote conflicts in the middle East could result in an increased tensions elsewhere in the region and may result in airspace closures, flight cancellations, and other travel disruption. Demonstrations and protests activity may also occur. And local security situations could deteriorate with little notice. Avoid all demonstrations and protests. There's an increased threat of attacks against Israeli interests across the region.

[01:09:55] Now, a lot of these, um, all these cautionary statements are kind of echoed in the, uh, American ones, but I decided to go with the Australian ones because, um, I trust the information a little bit more, be honest with you, because they are, there's, and there's honestly more information. Uh, the Australian sites are a lot more detailed. Okay. And the American sites, uh, are not.

[01:10:20] They say, uh, missiles and uncrewed aerial drone systems were last launched at the UAE from Yemen in early 2022. Most were intercepted, but there were casualties. And I did read that three people, uh, did die, uh, in Abu Dhabi from aerial drones launched from Yemen in 2022. So further attacks are always possible. Um, now this one could just be anywhere. Physical and verbal harassment and sexual assaults do occur.

[01:10:46] Avoid walking alone after dark and isolated places, including pedestrian underpasses. That's just good. That's just, that's just street smarts in general, but, uh, you know, pay attention, but that's good to know, right? That's in general. But what about local? Let's get hyper local with local laws for Abu Dhabi, right? Now, even though Yas Island is a tourist destination and it's not really considered as a traditional, uh, a place as the rest of the region is, cause it's very, uh, you know, it's, excuse

[01:11:15] me, it's predominantly Muslim. It's governed under Sharia law. So it's, it's, it's kind of a lockdown lockdown area. They're not going to be as, as freewheeling, um, and the outskirts of Yas Island as they are, you know, in Yas Island. It's probably still good to familiarize yourself with what is considered taboo, insulting or downright illegal.

[01:11:38] For example, it's illegal to insult an ethnic or religious group, the UAE itself, the Royal Families or government officials, or even the UAE flag. Oh. Okay. Same sex relations are illegal and same sex marriage is not recognized. Uh huh. It's illegal to be drunk in public, including at airports across the UAE. So you cannot fly into Abu Dhabi hammered.

[01:12:07] Okay. You just can't do it that you're, you're done. It's illegal to photograph airports and transport infrastructure, bridges, government buildings, embassies, and palaces. Oh. Because you could be doing like OPSEC or something. I don't know. Sure. I do love a good Dallas picture though. I know, right? Like you can't, I mean, that's just, come on, man. It's also illegal to photograph anyone or post photos of people or their personal belongings,

[01:12:36] including vehicles, on social media without their consent. They have strict social media laws there. Wow. Now this also includes people in the background of photos. Now, of course, in America, you have no right to privacy when you're outside, which is why all these little crap head TikTok freaks like to, you know, just go and cause trouble. And they go, and then they're, oh, we're going to, you know, put you on TikTok. You can't do anything because I have a big bodyguard. Ha ha ha.

[01:13:05] I'm a dork. Ha ha. Um, yeah. So in, in, in the Middle East, in the UAE, in Abu Dhabi, you cannot do that. You absolutely cannot be posting photos of people in the background of, you know, whatever, which is why if you kind of look at some of these, uh, look up some of these places for videos, like tourist videos, there's not a ton, not as many as there would be for like a Disney destination. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think also maybe they're a little bit better. Okay. Because of that. I don't know why.

[01:13:34] Um, let's see. You must obtain permission in advance from the Emirati authorities to undertake media activity relating to the production, transmission, or distribution of printed digital audio, video, or visual information. If you fail to do this, you could be arrested and deported from the UAE. So I would, I would be interested to talk to maybe some of these, uh, these content creators

[01:14:00] who have been to the UAE, who have reviewed Ferrari world and done this to see if they had to reach out to get permission to be able to shoot or not. Yeah. But I also want to know what all these Disney vloggers are going to do with this information. Because you know what I mean? They're going to have a hard time. They're going to freak out. Like, what do you mean? We can't be, uh, it's going to be, it's going to be awful. I'm sad for them. And we won't be seeing anyone go live there anytime soon. Just walking around the park. It's going to be beautiful. Thanks for the galaxy.

[01:14:30] Thanks for the roses. I just want to watch other people eat food because I can't afford to buy it all myself. Now the UAE only accepts passports with male or female sex markers. So if you are a trans person or non-binary or whatever, and you have an X, I don't know why I'm making the okay sign. If you have an X, uh, for, you know, where you're, you're the M or the F goes, you are not allowed. They will not accept you in the UAE.

[01:14:58] You are actually not allowed to enter the country, which I think I haven't really been keeping up with that. I know there's something with the, um, American passports now too, where like you can't have X anyways. So I don't know. There's a whole, this hard, weird do work. We're all cooked. The middle East has also had their own special strain of Corona viruses. Ooh, their own special. Yeah.

[01:15:21] Middle East respiratory syndrome or MERS Cove was first identified in 2012 in Saudi Arabia. It is airborne and is also zoonotic. So it can pass between animals and humans and frequently does. 35% of MERS cases reported to the WHO have died. As of March, 2025, there have been a total of 2,629 reported cases of Middle East respiratory

[01:15:50] syndrome worldwide with 955 deaths. Now, as much as I love fear mongering respiratory viruses, so more people mask. And so I don't feel so awkward about it. Most cases between humans are in within the healthcare settings or close contact from family members, or what seems like it's, it's, it's highly focused around, uh, camels. Oh, so you can get a lot of like farmers and a lot of people that have, that have come in

[01:16:19] contact with infected camels spreading that disease. Um, so still, wow. It's there. It's a thing. Wild. Air pollution is also a very big health factor. Now, right now the air quality in Abu Dhabi is in the low nineties. And I, I didn't know what the scale was, which is, it seems like it was like very bad or something like that. 90 to 3000. There you go.

[01:16:48] Um, and then I looked up what Anaheim is at right now, just in case on the same chart, it was 65, but you always hear about LA being so polluted or whatever. So air pollution in, in the middle East in general is not good. It's pretty bad. So you might want to mask when you're outside anyways. I have a dumb question. Oh, I doubt it. Oh, just give me a sec. Um, why is it the middle East? Like the middle of what? Yeah. I've never understood that.

[01:17:18] Um, but it's right there. Oh, shoot. Did you lose it? No, no. I'm trying to figure out how to ask it, but does, does, does sand cause pollution? Like is, does that have a factor in it? Is pollution like just when the air is dirty? Yes. Okay. So they say that, uh, so I don't know if you remember, I, I, I cite this all the time and I should know more about it cause I forget about it.

[01:17:43] But, uh, what, 10, 15 years ago, there was a big, big giant dust storm in China. Huge. Where you could see it from space. Right? Yeah. I do remember that. Yeah. Yeah. And they were tracking it because it was fun. Right? Yeah. Well, they were tracking. They didn't know where it was going to go. And then, so it ended up coming to LA. And so based on, you know, doing climate science, uh, which I know is shocking, especially now, um, they found that in general, like 25% of the pollution in LA comes from China.

[01:18:13] It's just on the, on the global wind, you know, train track. Wow. Yeah. So it, it definitely can be, you know, part of that too. And air pollution definitely isn't just smog. Okay. Yeah. You know, it's a particulate, like you don't want to breathe that. Yeah. Not for long anyway. Yeah. The UAE also has a zero tolerance policy towards drugs, including for travelers transiting through the country. So if you have like a layover or if you're just, you know, whatever, you know, you get

[01:18:42] caught with drugs, you're, you're, you're toasted penalties for drug trafficking may include the death penalty or a sentence up to life imprisonment. That's trafficking. That's not bringing a shroom into the country for yourself. Right? Well, it depends. I believe on how cool you are to. So there's two court systems in, in, um, in the middle East, I think, but in Abu Dhabi

[01:19:09] specifically where Sharia law, I know too much now about, about Abu Dhabi, uh, Sharia, the Sharia law courts, um, deal more like interpersonal family matters and stuff. And then there's like a federal court system. Okay. So I don't know which one you would go to because depending on what I have no idea, I have no idea. I guess I should have just kind of stopped there. You said some words that were interesting and like, well, I'll get to this in a second.

[01:19:37] Penalties for having or using illegal drugs include lengthy jail terms and heavy fines. These laws also apply for transiting. Okay. That's, those are copy thing. You can be charged with possession from only trace amounts of drugs being found on your body, clothing, or luggage. Now, on a couple of sites I read, they specifically mentioned like poppy seed bagels. Like don't bring them in. That's bad because they can test positive for opiates and then you're screwed by your bagels locally.

[01:20:06] You can be convicted for having 0.05 grams or less of a drug on your body, clothing, or luggage. That is nothing right. In October, 2024, just in case you thought, eh, maybe it wasn't, you know, 10 years ago. So, 2024, Charles Wimberly, a U.S. Navy veteran from Georgia faced three plus years of imprisonment

[01:20:35] in Dubai prison for carrying prescription medication. He traveled to the UAE on the 21st of September and carried CBD oil and ibuprofen with prescription due to back injury and PTSD. He was arrested from Dubai International Airport over allegations of trafficking his own prescriptions. A human rights advocate, Roger Sterling, said it was every tourist's nightmare.

[01:21:02] He was later released on bail but denied permission to leave the Emirates. And I didn't do a follow-up to see where he is now. But so he's out on bail or he was, but he couldn't leave. Which I don't know. I mean, I guess, you know, go to Yas Island. I don't know what you're doing. So, yeah, it's, I think it's one of those sticky subjects that is maybe... Evolving a little bit. And I get into it a little bit more. Their viewpoints on stuff are evolving.

[01:21:32] It's not to excuse a lot of this nonsense, but it might not be as big of a deal moving forward, I guess. I don't know. So, what else can you be fined, jailed, or deported for, Eric? Do you know? You don't know. I don't. No, you've done all the research. That's, well... So, you can be fined, jailed, or deported for insulting other people, the UAE, the royal families, the local government, or local officials.

[01:22:00] Where he said disrespecting the UAE flag, but insulting other people. I don't know what that means. I'd be really curious about, like, how far they would go with that. Hey, chucklehead, you cut me off at that corner. Yeah. All right, kid. Get in the van. You're done. Again, discriminating against or insulting a racial, ethnic, or religious group. We'll see. There you go. Yeah, that's okay. Making rude gestures. So, if you go, don't flip people off. Don't grab your junk in the general aggression of a person.

[01:22:29] Making inappropriate or offensive comments on social media. Wow. I didn't like the acolyte. Well, that's not offensive or inappropriate. It's accurate. Oh, I hated Andor. I mean, you know, hey, that's not inappropriate either. Swearing. Touching another person without their permission. And, you know, I mean, that's fine too, right? But swearing? Come on. Apparently, I found a story.

[01:22:58] An American social media influencer, Tiara Young Allen, was trapped in Dubai for months after she was arrested over possible charges of shouting at an employee of a car rental agency she hired a car from. Oh. So, her side of the story was that this man started shouting at her, so she shouted back. Okay. No. Not allowed to do that. No, you're not allowed to do that. Especially as a woman. Correct. Correct. So, she got busted and locked up.

[01:23:28] And I love that it's a social media influence. I don't know why. I think all the harm in the world come to those people. And that's great. It's illegal to harass women in the UAE. Behavior that may offend or be considered illegal includes glaring, ogling or long stares, okay, unwanted conversation, which to me is awesome, stalking or, of course, touching any part of the body.

[01:23:57] But imagine if we had laws like that in the U.S. Imagine how comfortable women would be, like, just walking down the street. Like, that's awesome. Yeah, it'd be amazing. Taking photographs of people, particularly women, without permission can lead to arrest or fines. This also applies to people you've just met. Yeah. So, there you go. What do you think of that? I'm taking a picture with George Clooney. No, no, no. No, you can't do it. He will press George.

[01:24:22] Now, a lot of this kind of stuff, the social stuff, apparently is handled by Sharia law courts, but it can be dropped if the offending party or the offended party drops the charges. They're like, no, that wasn't actually offensive. I don't mind. Yeah, or they change their mind or whatever. So, it's, yeah. In an odd way, it is very, like, protective, you know?

[01:24:50] It's just there's a certain level of discomfort around even that. You're like, oh, that makes sense. It's, oh, wait, you could be jailed for having a conversation with someone you don't know. I mean, yeah, I guess, yeah. And, you know, I do appreciate the social media part.

[01:25:13] I didn't put this in, but there's a lot around spreading inaccurate or false information or defaming people online that's, like, not tolerated. I know, right? It would be horrendous for our political system in general. But, like, you can't post fake stories. You can't incite people online. You can't just aggravate people and just post content for rage bait.

[01:25:43] You can't do that. Yeah, and that's simultaneously, like, wow, that's interesting. If you could really prove something like that, then you could avoid a lot of the weird partisanship we have. But also, you could use that the opposite direction and say, well, you can't possibly say anything bad against a bad government that everybody believes. Well, that's the thing is you also can't talk bad about the government. Right. Yeah. So, they go hand in hand, you know, for sure.

[01:26:12] And perhaps the most important, as I mentioned before, same-sex relationships are illegal and many may lead to severe punishment, including prison and fines. Now, technically, legally, they are illegal. But I guess the TLDR here is that they don't really prosecute for that anymore, but it's still illegal. In 2022, the penalties for same-sex relationships were altered to be punishable by six months in prison.

[01:26:43] But even with these changes, there have been no known arrests or prosecutions for same-sex activities since 2015, when the punishment was between one and 15 years in prison. Wow. Wow. It's technically still illegal, but I think it might be like to save face with the locals who are trying to drive even more tourism to the area. So, you have the Yas Island, which is kind of more westernified, I guess, in spirit, I suppose.

[01:27:11] But then you are in this deeply religious corner of the world that's literally governed under Sharia law. And, you know, it's like you can't. Yeah. So, I wonder if it's just to satisfy those people. Like, let's section off this part. Maybe that's why they had to cut it. It's like a circumcision. Yeah. From the mainland. He's like, no, we're not even touching the same land as these people. Goodness. But we'll take their money. Yeah.

[01:27:41] Cross-dressing is also illegal. That's what they say on this website. But, you know, specifically it's for, you know, trans people. So, if you're transgender or intersex or your gender on your passport doesn't match your appearance, you may be questioned at immigration or denied entry into the UAE. Now, the UAE faces also many accusations of human rights violations. Now, this is as recent as January of this year. Dang.

[01:28:07] Internationally, they are known to run secret prisons in Yemen where torture, excuse me, enhanced interrogation methods are frequently used. But you'll be glad to hear they have enacted several reforms to their capital punishment systems. Eric, removing stoning, flogging, and, you know, stuff like that. In fact, their last known stoning sentence, I can't believe, like, we're talking about this with the date of two in front of it. I know. Oh, I'm not reading.

[01:28:36] So, this isn't a biblical reference from. Right. No. A thousand years ago. Right. No, this is literally their last known stoning sentence was way back in 2014. God. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I was 14 back then. They're moving forward. You know what I mean? They're moving. They're moving, folks. They're moving.

[01:28:59] Blasphemy of all faiths is illegal and has been since 2015 with punishments of a five-year prison term, a fine of 500,000 to 2 million dioroms, or both. Expats involved in insulting Islam are liable for deportation. So, be careful when you go over there. Don't watch the South Park video with mom and you'll burn.

[01:29:24] A federal law in the UAE prohibits swearing in WhatsApp conversations and penalizes swearing in public by a $68,000 fine and imprisonment. So, those of you who think that WhatsApp is free from all of the stuff, if you are in the UAE, they are watching your WhatsApp to make sure you don't say certain words. They probably are. I mean, because WhatsApp is owned by Facebook.

[01:29:54] Of course. Yeah. And so, Facebook classically kind of partners with all these other countries. So, they might actually be filtering. Who knows? Jeez. But in July 2015, an Australian expat was deported for swearing on Facebook. Huh. Wow. So, it's a park that Disney has to put up zero capital for, only its brand and ideas, you know,

[01:30:19] and then gets to pull down service fees and licensing fees every year. And this is pretty great from a business perspective. Yeah. Like, that is a sweetheart deal. Plus, it sounds like they do still have some brand control as well. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, in pulling clips for the show, I got to see a lot of views of Yas Island. And for all the money poured into this space, it still feels very cold.

[01:30:46] There's no sense of style or personality in any of these locations. Just rich people's idea of what renting wealth looks like. Many of the places I saw just looked like modern strip malls with kind of flat design concepts and nothing really to differentiate them from the next place. The draw here, I suppose, isn't for the West, though certainly many people from this region vacation there.

[01:31:10] It's probably a location to bring many Western concepts to the Middle East to folks that can't make it all the way over here. I don't know. Check it out. Tell me if I'm wrong. It just doesn't really seem... Their idea of, like, modern design is like a sweeping arch over a water feature. That's it. It just doesn't really... Everything has the same Swiss coffee color. It's not... It doesn't... It seems really boring, to be honest with you. Okay.

[01:31:38] So, all that aside, what can we expect from Disney with this part? We literally only have one image to go off. And it was funny because I was texting everybody. I was like, why don't you guys look at the image and try to pull out what you think, you know, could be it. Eric's like, yeah, that sounds great. Mostly trees. And I'm looking at it. Yeah, and I'm looking at it. I'm like, there is no way you can make sense of this. There's literally no way. It's a bit hard to conceptualize here. Let me put it back up there.

[01:32:07] The only thing you can really see is the weenie, the modern castle. Yes, exactly. It's hard to just even pull focus to a familiar shape. Yeah. You know, it's like... So, the concept, for those who haven't seen it, it's like digital watercolor, of course, with lots of shapes and designs kind of hidden underneath the bright colors.

[01:32:30] It sort of reminds me of like camouflage, where the eye has a hard time focusing on any one thing, which is obviously by design, but probably because they don't know what's going there. So, instead of having people say, oh, that wasn't in the concept art or this is what we saw. It's just sort of like this nebulous, like, oh, you can kind of infer anything, right? Yeah. Yeah. The modern castle is the most noticeable thing.

[01:32:58] It's a shimmering crystal design that looks kind of even too opulent and too out of the way in the world of Frozen. Like, it just looks weird. Loads of greenery all around in this image. To the left of the castle, there seems to be a little cove. There's a dome farther back. Lots of pathways around, right? Some structure looming on the right side, right here, with this very sweeping line that looks kind of like a roller coaster track or whatever.

[01:33:27] But it's all very, very nondescript. Is that a whimsical large creature in the bay on the right? Yeah, I know, right? The tapir. In fact, there are more than a few sort of leading curved lines throughout this image, like this right here. I don't know if you can see my mouse on the OBS. But I think it's like maybe implying roller coasters. Maybe these are walking paths. Maybe it's a monorail. Who knows?

[01:33:57] It could be literally anything. They could also just be adding some kind of like movement and kinetic energy to the design. You know what I mean? Yeah. So we have no idea. And I would love to hear from you guys, from anyone out there, what do you want to see in this technologically advanced theme park? I mean, it's open to anything. They do have the only concept that I think that they were going to focus on is they were going to be telling a story of the pearl, which is like a Middle Eastern fable.

[01:34:25] That's definitely the only sort of story that they've mentioned will be in this park so far to keep it sort of like Emirati and, you know, in the middle, rooted in the Middle East somewhere. Interesting. Yeah. I don't know. All in all, I expected kind of something better from Yas Island than what I found online. The tech already in place seems amazing. So there's no need to worry about like entertainment value here.

[01:34:52] And the island does incorporate some pretty neat environmental policies. So the whole initiative of the sustainable city smacks a bit of greenwashing. But hopefully the Disney park is a success and many Disney vloggers get arrested. That's it. That's what I got on Yas Island. That's a lot. That's a lot. That is a lot. That's more than what I've heard on a lot of other things. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:35:17] It's interesting because they have all of these crazy theme parks that are going on out there. And then Disney says, we're throwing our hat in the ring. And they're kind of doing that thing where they're like, well, we've been watching what's going on. We can do it better. And that's great. But it's also like, I don't know. I want to. Do I want to go there? No. What's actually happening at this place? And there are all these nuances.

[01:35:45] And I have friends who are gay men who are married who are like, yeah, we'll go to check it off the list. We don't want to spend a whole lot of time there. I'm like, okay. Okay. So I did root around a little bit online to see what, you know, the real, because often the real world experience of people doesn't necessarily reflect what a website will tell you about what to expect from a scenario.

[01:36:13] So there are a lot of people like on Reddit and stuff like that saying it's not that big of a deal. If you're not a kind of a jerk and you're not flaunting or whatever, you're not going to get messed with, especially on the island. If you leave the island and you go somewhere else, you might have to just pay attention to where you're at. There was a lot of talk, which I didn't get into, about the clothing for women. When you're on the island and you're near the beach, you can wear a bikini.

[01:36:42] You can wear a two-piece bikini. You can do whatever you want. But away from the beach life, cover your shoulders, cover your knees. So there's this really kind of interesting dichotomy, I guess, or duality of cultures sort of forced to live together for money. Capitalism wins, man. It just does. It absolutely just wins.

[01:37:09] Now, when I first started researching this, I thought a lot of the same-sex marriage stuff would be more prominent. And yes, it is still illegal, but there are a lot of gay people online saying like, yeah, we went there. It's like nobody, you know, there was someone brought up the fact that online and a couple of websites, they say like handholding is illegal. Oh. Public displays of affection are illegal. And so other people like, I need clarification on what this means before I pretend to go there. Right.

[01:37:38] Like you can hold hands in public. Like you can, you know, if you're kissing goodbye or whatever, that's fine. Maybe something else, but don't make it a big giant. Like, you know, don't make out, but you can like give a, you can kiss each other. Yes. It's fine. On the ass island. Even, even in Florida, if you're making out with somebody, they're probably going to be like, Hey, Hey, Hey, come on. I know. Right. Come on. But yeah, but at least in Florida, it doesn't come with the threat of imprisonment. You know? Like I get that. I, I, I, I get it.

[01:38:06] But I, I guess what I'm saying is for all the stuff that's online from the government and we know, because they want to be careful. It seems like the boots on the ground, the real world experience isn't as, I don't know, dire, I suppose, even though the rules are still there on this resort. They, they, they're not there so much. It's fine. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Within, you know, your mileage may vary.

[01:38:33] If you are thinking about going and some of these rules impact you, definitely get on the subreddits. Definitely look online. Like definitely talk to people. You know, there were, it was kind of sad, honestly, because there were, there were a few, a few people going like, yeah, I dress very, you know, very out. It's very clear my sexuality and I don't know if I, you know, I have to go there for work. I have to go to Dubai for work. I have to go to, I have to go to Abu Dhabi for work. What do I do?

[01:39:02] And people were like, well, try to hide it. Try to dress differently. And other people were like, no, what do you, like, so I don't know. Yeah. I can't, I can't advise you on that. Are you willing to sacrifice, you know, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. It's, yeah, that's a whole new, a whole new thing. A whole new, yeah, it is.

[01:39:26] So, you know, I also understand people who don't want to go, like, I don't want to go for myriad reasons. But I would also understand people not want to go kind of out of a protest thing. Like what seems funny to me and what people are saying online, I've read some like KTLA articles about this, where people are like, you know, this is a park, a company that takes money from LGBTQ members. Yeah. From people, right? They sell merchandise.

[01:39:55] They have pride days. Yeah, they have explicit days. The gay days. For this. Yes, right. And then here they are building a park where that is illegal. So, you pick a side. Yeah, it's kind of weird. Do something. But, you know, it's, again, it's capitalism. It's a brand. They're securing their foothold over there. And yeah, I don't know. It's complicated. And I dislike that it has to happen.

[01:40:24] Like that we have to talk about it. Yeah. Because we do. We have to talk about it. Yeah. It's a conversation that, you know, hasn't ended yet, which is also a bummer. Yeah. Okay. Let's do one. Let's do one thing. It's a long show. Yes. But we're going to do one mention. March in the past, present and future with all the news that's fit to cover. It's the Ears Up Disney News.

[01:40:49] I'm just, I'm looking for a solid wall load bearing beam right now. Thinking about how much editing I'm going to have to do for this stupid thing. I wanted to mention real quick here, real fast, everybody. There are a bunch of new food options coming to the Disneyland Hotel this summer, everybody. In preparation for their 70th anniversary.

[01:41:17] So a lot of Disneyland hotels are going to have new foods and stuff like that. So it should be, you know, pretty, pretty fun. I'll skip some of this. So the new menu is at the Disney's Grand Californian Hotel and Spa. So you have the Daisy Loaf Cake, whatever that is. But this is it right there. It's pretty big and it looks delish. Yeah. Claribel macarons, which is really cute.

[01:41:42] So there are two, four, six, eight macarons in like a, you know, holder or whatever. And two of them have Claribel on them. And the other six, those right? Yeah. Have like cow patterns on them, if that makes sense. But they're in like kind of funky colors. Like one's like pink and kind of like a light black. Looks super stylish. Super cute. This design right here, I would actually wear on a shirt. I think it's very cool. It's almost like leopard print, but, you know, fun.

[01:42:10] This is one that Eric and I were like enthralled with. It's a goofy crisped rice treat. That's wild. And it's like, it's like camping goofy. Right. Right. And he has like a fisherman's vest on and he has one foot kind of kicked out, one hand on his hip and he's kind of like thumbs up. Maybe it's hard to say in the classic goofy way, you know, goofy's classically insane like that. Let's see if I can get a little closer. Yes, I can. Yes, Island.

[01:42:40] And oh no, he's like holding onto his vest. And it's a, it's a, yeah, it's shaped like a picture frame. So it's like printed on the thing. And then like the frame has sprinkles on it and there's like icing for a tree or whatever. I'm like, this picture is amazing. This should be sold as a fancy picture frame in like the Disney stores. It's super cool. I love it so much. A Pluto whoopie pie. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this Pluto pie. It looks like Pluto. It's just like a giant macaron.

[01:43:08] And then the ears for Pluto are like these two chocolate things that go underneath the cream in the middle. The cream is green. It just looks neat. It looks yummy. At the Grand California Hotel. Mr. P says it's from the Goofy movie. Wait. That's a, there you go. Yeah, sure. A park character Goofy. Come on. Yeah. That picture. Breakfast stuff. Now, one of these pissed me off. Uh-oh.

[01:43:38] Avocado toast on sourdough. Now, Taryn, what is avocado? Oh, it's, it's avocado on top of sour, on top of toast. You would think that. So, if I said that, if, if I took that avocado toast and I put poached eggs, ricotta, chives, crispy garlic, honey, basil, and lemon oil on it, could I still call it avocado toast? No. That's what they do. The avocado toast on sourdough is not avocado toast. Sounds really good though. I mean, it does, but it's not avocado toast.

[01:44:08] No, it's not. That's, that's like a whole, that's a whole thing. Right. A whole different thing. That's what I'm saying. That's a full meal. Yeah, sure. You can get a sticky chicken wings with gochujang barbecue sauce, shrimp ceviche, farmer's market frittata, some yummy stuff. It sounds like. Olivia in the chat is very adamant that that is still avocado toast. No. No way. Olivia, no. You can't say that the salmon salad is, is a cucumber salad.

[01:44:38] You can't, you can't take the salmon salad, replace salmon and with the word cucumber and say, oh, it's a cucumber salad with all this other stuff on it. Can't do it. You can't do it. Whatever. New menus at the Disneyland hotel. I had no follow up on that one. Yeah. I mean, you know, look, Olivia can boss me around. It's fine.

[01:45:03] At the Tangaroa Terrace Tropical Bar and Grill, they have ube stuffed French toast. Now I've never had ube before, but I don't know the idea of a French toast. I don't know like what, like what Japanese milk bread, coconut custard, ube diplomat cream and fresh tropical fruit. I would definitely try it. Oh yeah. I mean, I would definitely try it. Okay. It's going to be very pretty looking, I bet. Yeah. Okay.

[01:45:32] This one pissed me off too. The Korean style breakfast sandwich. Now I want you to tell me what is Korean style about this. Okay. Here we go. Sliced country ham, fresh tomato slices and sliced Havarti on egg coated Japanese milk bread. They're doubling down on this milk bread. Literally nothing. Unless that's like a Korean, unless that's literally like. Japanese milk bread is good. So I get it. No, but that's a breakfast sandwich.

[01:46:02] Well, if anything, it would be a Japanese style breakfast sandwich. I don't know where the Korean part is. Maybe this is how Koreans eat breakfast sandwiches. With Japanese toast and American ham. I mean, maybe. I don't know either. But this does sound delicious, although too sweet. Tropical pancakes. Macadamia nut buttermilk pancakes. Already sounds kind of sweet, right? Passion fruit curd. Cut that sweetness. Love it. And toasted coconut. That sounds amazing to me. Sounds fantastic.

[01:46:32] It also sounds like it's 800,000 calories. For sure. Like, wow. Now, to be clear, I would literally try all of this stuff. Oh, yeah. Of course. Even the loamy salmon sandwich. Which is up here. Which is just like a bagel and lox, but instead of a bagel, it's a cuisson. Oh, no. Yeah, I would do it, man. I would not. Eat the hibiscus, too. That one's a no for me. That's right. Feshwong cucumber salad. Chinese five spice.

[01:47:02] Fresh garlic and scallions, toasted sesame seeds, and hot oil vinaigrette. I feel like you're in just for the five spice. I am, but also like, you know, I'm so American where I see Szechuan. I'm like, oh, well, the Szechuan peppercorns are there. And if they're not there, then that's not Szechuan. I'm like, I don't know. That's just what I'm geared to think. Uh-huh. Yeah. Eat more than peppercorns. Dude. Okay, so this is the macadamia nut pancakes.

[01:47:31] So it's macadamia nut pancakes. There's three of them. They're huge. They're dinner plate size. And then in between each of them is the passion fruit curd. So it's like a cake. It's just insane. Oh, wow. That looks so good, though. I know. They are actually having breakfast at Trader Sam's now, too. So you can get the ube stuff, French toast. You can get the salmon sandwich, Korean style breakfast sandwich. The pancakes, chili orange glazed chicken wings. It sounds good. And then that cucumber salad, of course. What's the stuff to drink?

[01:48:00] Seawater spritz. Ooh, this sounds good. Sailor Jerry spiced rum, Aperol, Falernum, pineapple juice, and passion fruit syrup. Basically, I am all in anything passion fruit syrup. Yeah, for sure. Okay. The Eternal Inquiry, Niacin Agricol Blanc Rum, Hamilton Demerara Rum, Light Amber Honey, Passion Fruit Syrup, and Bitters. Huh.

[01:48:30] Interesting. I think I got Prosecco. At the Palm Breeze Bar, our new favorite bar, they have a margarita pizza. Shows it right there. It looks weird. Ahi Tuna Tartan. That's crazy. Let's see. What else? Nothing really interesting. I mean, you know. It's all good looking stuff, but it's nothing too crazy there. It's nothing of note, really. You know what I mean? It's fine. They got some drinks. Goofy's Kitchen. What do we got here?

[01:48:58] Frozen non-alcoholic pina colada or alcoholic version if you want. Brewery X Huckleberry Hard Seltzer. They just won a gold for something at the World Beer Cup, I think, actually. The Broken Spell Lounge. Where's that? Yeah. I've never. That's in the Disneyland Hotel next to Goofy's Kitchen. It used to be the Steakhouse 55 Lounge. Oh. Oh, I didn't know that. I wish we would have known that. Yeah.

[01:49:27] I'm going to go back again. It opened up pretty recently. And yeah, now it's villains themed. Oh, sweet. That's cool. Brandy went there last time she was in Disneyland. I haven't seen it yet. Sounds cool. Anyway, that's it. That's all we're doing. That's fine. Yeah, sounds neat. So if you're going to be in the parks for the next, I don't know, a couple months, I guess, for the 70th, grab some of these bites and sip on the sips. Oh, yeah. That's what we do in the park. Bites and sips. I love a bite and sip, bro.

[01:49:58] I mean, come on. You know what I mean? A bite and a sip. Love it. All right. Let's get out of here finally, huh? What do you think? That was good. It was a very long show. Lots of info. Yeah, lots of stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah, absolutely, man. I appreciate you guys hanging on with us. It was a lot. And, you know, look, I don't want to deter anybody. You know, if you want to go have fun on Yas Island, if you want to Yasify yourself, that should be the tagline.

[01:50:27] Yasify yourself on Yas Island. Yas. Yas Queen. I don't know, man. Let me know how it is. I don't know. I mean, it does seem kind of fun. I'll be honest with you. Like, looking at, like, the houses and stuff and the apartments, like, why don't we just move there? A lot of reasons. I just want to move. I just want to go somewhere else. Like, just, I don't want to say, I don't want to be rude. No, don't do it. You're going to be arrested. I know. They're coming for you, Taryn.

[01:50:58] Yeah. They're going to come for me. I'll arrest you. I'm not going to be moving there anytime soon. I'll just say that. Yeah. I'll send you a postcard. Okay. All right, buddy. Thanks a lot for tuning in. I really do appreciate it. If you want more information on the shows that we have on the network, you can go to earsup-podcast.com. There you can find information on Puny Pod, Supreme Resort, and Bantha Milk, and a bunch of other stuff that we do. Also, please consider going over to patreon.com slash earsup and become a Patreon supporter for $5 a month.

[01:51:28] You get to support not only this show, but every other show on the network that we do. And then you get a bonus secret show episode, which, of course, for those of you in the higher tiers, you have the early access right now. That I'll change in a couple of days to make it available to everybody. But you also have the bonus Puny Pod episodes that get put up, and I think stuff from the Supreme Resort. And I'm rushing through this stuff because I'm not really clear on it. Anyway, there's a lot of stuff.

[01:51:58] We also have limited run series that I'm still working on, like Pyramid Eye of the Ears, cool people doing cool things. There's a lot, a lot of content. So if you want extra content and you want to support the shows at the same time, join Patreon, $5 a month, and you get to do that. Anyway, I love you guys. Take care. And until next time, we'll see you in the park.

[01:52:41] Thanks, Mr. P.