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Insights Into Entertainment: Episode 148 “Swapping the Bobs Again”

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Chapek is out, Iger is in at Disney again. What impact will that have on the company, the parks and the material coming out of the media giant?

After 11 seasons the Walking Dead comes to an end, kind of. We’ll take a look at the impact the show has had over the last decade and where the zombies are going next.

Finally we’ll recap some of the seasonal events and pop culture shows we’ve been able to start enjoying again and hope to bring much more in the new year.

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Show Notes

[INTRO THEME]

[INTRODUCTIONS] (2-3 minutes)

  • Insights Into Entertainment: Episode 148 “Swapping the Bobs Again”
  • My patient and understanding co-host Michelle Whalen

[SHOW SUMMARY] (2-3 minutes)

  • Today we’re going to talk about the Changing of the Bob’s
  • Some Walking Dead Chat & News
  • Out & About 

[Show Plugs] (2-3 minutes)

  • Subscriptions:
  • Google
  • Apple
  • Spotify
  • Stitcher
  • Amazon

Contact Info

[TRANSITION]

[SEGMENT 1:] (8-12 minutes)

The Changing of the Bob’s

  • Bob Iger, one of the most successful CEOs in the history of The Walt Disney Company, is returning to once again run the media empire. 
  • It’s a shocking development at Hollywood’s biggest company. 
  • The News dropped on Sunday Night, November 20th. 
  • Bob Chapek, who replaced Iger in 2020 as CEO, is stepping down immediately.

Susan Arnold, Chairman of the Board for Disney, said in a statement on Sunday night.

“We thank Bob Chapek for his service to Disney over his long career, including navigating the company through the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic. The Board has concluded that as Disney embarks on an increasingly complex period of industry transformation, Bob Iger is uniquely situated to lead the Company through this pivotal period.”

  • Investors cheered the news, sending Disney shares up 9% Monday after the stock has lost roughly 36% of its value this year.
  • The company is coming off a lackluster earnings report that showed growth for its streaming endeavors. 
    • However, that came at a great cost. 
    • Disney’s streaming business lost $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter. 
    • That report sent Disney’s stock tumbling after a year of sluggish-to-bad performance.
  • Chapek guided Disney through the pandemic, one of the most tumultuous periods in the company’s nearly 100-year history, but ultimately Disney decided that its future was in better hands with Iger.
  • Away from the pandemic, Chapek had a short but bumpy tenure as the head of Disney.
    • Chapek, who served as chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products before taking over for Iger, found himself dealing with issues:
      • Pay with Scarlett Johansson, one of the company’s biggest stars
      • Disney’s battles with Florida and its own employees, regarding the state’s controversial bill restricting certain LGBTQ topics in the classroom.
  • The “Don’t Say Gay” controversy was a flashpoint for Chapek’s stint at Disney.
    • In March, he was forced to apologize for his silence on Florida’s controversial bill after initially declining to comment on it.
    • Chapek spent weeks doing damage control, telling employees that Disney was “increasing our support for advocacy groups” among other things
    • His public stance was in stark contrast to Iger, who took a public stance against the Florida bill.
  • Iger has an almost mythical status as the leader of Disney (DIS). 
    • He spent 15 years as CEO
    • He was instrumental in acquiring major brands like Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm, the home to Star Wars. 
    • Iger also closed the $71 billion deal to buy most of 21st Century Fox and kicked off the streaming revolution at Disney (DIS) with the creation of Disney (DIS)+
    • He stayed on as executive chairman directing the company’s creative endeavors, then officially left the company — after nearly 50 years — at the end of last year.
  • Disney said Sunday that Iger has agreed to serve as CEO for two years with “a mandate from the Board to set the strategic direction for renewed growth and to work closely with the Board in developing a successor to lead the Company at the completion of his term.”
  • The move is also surprising since Chapek just renewed his contract. 
    • The company’s board of directors unanimously voted to extend Chapek’s contract as CEO for another three years, the company said in June. 
    • Chapek’s new contract began in July and was set to run until 2025.

[SEGMENT 2:] (8-12 minutes)

The Walking Dead

  • “The Walking Dead” has become a flagship series for AMC and one of the most successful shows on TV.  
    • With a global appeal and a back catalog of 10 previous seasons, the show has also helped fuel streaming platforms around the world who have licensed the rights to the show.
  • Season 9 of “The Walking Dead” had the most successful premiere of the past five years, when global demand for the show peaked at 96 times the average show demand in its first week.
  • The 10th season of the show saw some of its highest levels of demand globally in March and April of 2020, benefitting from what was many people’s first experience with pandemic-era lockdowns.
  • While demand for the show for most of its 11th season may have not reached the peaks of previous seasons, it remained fairly high as fans around the world returned each week to see how the long-running series would wrap up.
  • The show still managed to end on a high note ranking as the No. 1 most in-demand show globally for four days after its finale

.

  • The future of “The Walking Dead” franchise will lie with its numerous spinoffs.
    • In addition to the original series and “Fear the Walking Dead,” the “TWD” universe currently consists of “Tales of the Walking Dead,” an anthology spinoff that premiered in August, and “The Walking Dead: World Beyond,” a limited series that wrapped up its two-season run last year.
  • There are also three planned spinoffs that have been announced:
    • “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon” (starring Norman Reedus), 
    • “The Walking Dead: Dead City” (starring Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan), 
    • And a currently untitled series featuring the characters Rick and Michonne from the original series (Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira).
  • If there’s anyone who knows what The Walking Dead needs, its series producer and zombie effects expert Greg Nicotero.
    • Aside from perhaps series creator Robert Kirkman himself, no one else is as responsible for the series’ iconic undead look than the makeup effects enthusiast-turned-director. 
    • Nicotero dates his Walking Dead journey all the way back to before the beginning when original showrunner Frank Darabont brought him aboard before the pilot was even sold. 
    • And he’ll see it through beyond the end, directing the show’s series finale before moving on to produce several spinoffs.
  • Suffice it to say, Nicotero’s Walking Dead opinion matters.
    • Of the finale he was quoted as saying
      • “You can’t end The Walking Dead without Rick Grimes. Walking Dead was always Rick’s story, Nicotero says.
  • Indeed, despite Rick Grimes being absent from the show since the middle of season 9, The Walking Dead‘s series finale concludes with the post-apocalyptic lawman/hero front and center. 
    • The final moments of “Rest in Peace” serve as a sort of trailer for the upcoming untitled Rick and Michonne series. Viewers see both Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) separately compose letters to their daughter Judith before taking off into the zombie wilderness to make their family whole once again.
  • Fans have been waiting for such a moment ever since Rick left the series back in 2018. 
    • And soon they’ll get to see the proper conclusion to Rick Grimes’ story, albeit not in a way as originally envisioned. 
    • Immediately following Rick’s final episode on The Walking Dead, AMC revealed that the character’s story would be continuing in a series of feature films directed by Walking Dead universe czar Scott Gimple. 
    • And all parties were adamant that this would be a proper cinematic experience – not merely a dressed up TV movie.
  • News of a Rick Grimes movie was scarce and there was no scheduled shooting date to be found. 
    • Eventually, AMC announced that Rick’s story would conclude, alongside his partner Michonne, as part of a new six-episode TV series. 
    • According to Nicotero, the move from film to television was all a part of the traditional creative process.
  • “Several iterations of the (movie) script flew around and it just ended up not coming to fruition, Nicotero says. “The idea of doing a Rick Grimes show popped up a year and a half ago probably. I don’t think anybody really thought it was gonna happen. Lo’ and behold, as we get closer we start realizing ‘look, if we’re not going to do the movies then maybe there’s a show there.’”
  • Nicotero adds that they shot the finale footage with Lincoln and Gurira in Georgia this August.

[SEGMENT 3:] (8-12 minutes)

Out & About

Monster Mania at Oaks

Night of Lights at Creamy Acres 

[OUTRO AND CREDITS]

Transcription

00:00:01:21 – 00:00:07:26
Michelle
Insightful podcasts by informative host.

00:00:15:03 – 00:00:49:28
Michelle
Insights into Things, a podcast network editor. Welcome to Insights Into Entertainment, a podcast series taking a deeper look into entertainment and media. Your hosts Joseph and Michelle Whelan, a husband and wife team of pop culture fanatics, are exploring all things from music and movies to television and fandom.

00:00:51:16 – 00:01:05:10
Joseph
Welcome to Insights and Entertainment. This is episode 148, Swapping the Bobs Again. I’m your host, Joseph Whalen, and my patient and understanding co-host Michelle Whalen.

00:01:05:11 – 00:01:06:07
Michelle
Hi, everyone.

00:01:06:15 – 00:01:07:17
Joseph
How are you doing today, dear?

00:01:07:24 – 00:01:10:15
Michelle
I’m doing okay. How are you?

00:01:10:28 – 00:01:17:01
Joseph
I’m doing all right. We’ve we’ve been out of the loop for a while here with the podcast.

00:01:17:11 – 00:01:20:13
Michelle
Yeah, right. That’s.

00:01:20:13 – 00:01:22:14
Joseph
It’s had a lot going on.

00:01:22:19 – 00:01:23:28
Michelle
Yeah, that is true.

00:01:25:05 – 00:01:39:28
Joseph
We’ve had marching band syndrome. We’ve had COVID syndrome. You can still hear it in my voice, probably that I’m still suffering from a little bit. And this is almost two months after getting it now.

00:01:40:16 – 00:01:41:12
Michelle
Yeah, we’re almost.

00:01:42:00 – 00:01:53:21
Joseph
Almost two months now. So it’s. I’m still reeling from its effects. Given the severity, I had it with, I’m kind of glad I got my shots, all the shots that I’m.

00:01:53:22 – 00:02:20:28
Michelle
Just going to say, you know, we were we were all very fortunate to have all been vaccinated and boosted. And we were just about so close to getting our next round of boosters. And then we all kind of got sick and yeah, that kind of put things on the backburner. But fortunately we all had a very mild case.

00:02:21:01 – 00:02:30:00
Michelle
You know, we were all very fortunate. You know, unfortunately, you are still dealing with it, but not as bad as it could have been.

00:02:30:08 – 00:02:36:22
Joseph
Right. And we have we have marching band to thank for that. We’re pretty sure we got it from marching band.

00:02:36:26 – 00:02:39:02
Michelle
Such a happy family activity. Yeah.

00:02:39:16 – 00:02:53:10
Joseph
So. But a lot of stuff has happened. There’s a lot to talk about. We’re not going to get to everything today. We are going to talk about really two big things that happened in entertainment, one being the changing of the Bobs.

00:02:53:12 – 00:02:59:02
Michelle
Which happened actually on on the same day the the finale of.

00:02:59:03 – 00:03:00:22
Joseph
Oh, right, right, right, right, right.

00:03:01:17 – 00:03:03:00
Michelle
So funny how it happened.

00:03:03:00 – 00:03:25:06
Joseph
That we’ll be talking about Disney rotating the Bobs again, that we’re going to talk a little bit about The Walking Dead and their series finale and the impact and the future of that. And then we had a couple of events, one we just attended this weekend that I did not grab any of the pictures from you two to put up for.

00:03:25:06 – 00:03:28:16
Joseph
So Theater of the Mind for our viewing audience.

00:03:29:11 – 00:03:29:29
Michelle
This time.

00:03:29:29 – 00:03:30:13
Joseph
Around.

00:03:30:14 – 00:03:32:23
Michelle
Well, describe everything in detail.

00:03:34:04 – 00:03:56:26
Joseph
So the stick around for the last segment, we were going to talk about some of the stuff that we’ve been attending recently. But before we do that, I do want to take a moment to ask you to subscribe to the podcast. You can find both audio and video versions of all of our podcast listed as Insights and Entertainment.

00:03:57:19 – 00:04:06:01
Joseph
We’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, and I think we’re on Stitcher. Stitcher doesn’t do video. Neither do Spotify as well.

00:04:06:09 – 00:04:08:24
Michelle
But it probably should redo that list.

00:04:09:00 – 00:04:31:15
Joseph
So you can find audio versions listed as insights and entertainment under all those. But video versions have our insights. Anything has video and audio going. You can find it where you can find it right? I would also ask you to read it and give us your feedback. Tell us how bad I’m doing today because I’m a little out of practice.

00:04:32:23 – 00:04:58:09
Joseph
Give us your show suggestions or conventions or other events in your area you’d like us to talk about. You can email us at comments and insights into things dot com. You can find us on Twitter at Twitter.com, slash insights, underscore things, or we’re on Facebook at Facebook.com, slash insights in the things, podcast. Or you can find all those links and more on our official website and insights into things.

00:04:58:09 – 00:05:01:03
Joseph
Dot com. Shall we get into it?

00:05:01:06 – 00:05:01:24
Michelle
Sure.

00:05:01:29 – 00:05:02:24
Joseph
Here we go.

00:05:04:18 – 00:05:39:00
Michelle
Uh, so the changing of the Bobs, this was some some very interesting news that I know a lot of fans of Disney were hoping for some big change to happen. And last month it happened. So, Bob Iger was probably one of the most successful CEOs in history of the Walt Disney Company. And now it seems that he’s returning back to run the media empire.

00:05:39:27 – 00:06:16:01
Michelle
And this was very shocking news that basically dropped Sunday, November 20th at night. And what was interesting about this was that when all the other changes that have been happening with Disney in a lot of cases, cast members were finding out about it after the fact. You know, information in most cases about the different layoffs and things. All people were finding out about it through social media after the fact.

00:06:16:01 – 00:06:37:03
Michelle
And a lot of the cast members were very upset that, you know, they didn’t get any sort of notice ahead of time. And Sunday night, I guess it was early Sunday night, an email actually went out to all of the cast members. So cast members were actually the first ones to know about, as they should be, all of these changes.

00:06:37:03 – 00:07:19:07
Michelle
So that was definitely a step in the right direction that so many of the cast members actually actually felt. Know Bob Chapek, who replaced Iger in 2020, was actually stepping down immediately. It was like effective that night. All of the website information and updated. It was almost like Chapek didn’t even exist after the fact. You know, it was Susan Arnold who was the chairman of the board, had said in a statement that night, You know, we thank Bob Chapek for his service to Disney over his long career, including navigating the company through the unexpected challenges of the pandemic.

00:07:19:15 – 00:07:33:18
Michelle
The board has concluded that as Disney embarks on an increasingly complex period of in in industry transformation. Bob Iger is uniquely situated to lead the company through this pivotal period.

00:07:33:21 – 00:07:37:27
Joseph
Translation Bob Chapek sucks and we’re bringing Iger back, right? That we figure it out.

00:07:37:27 – 00:07:47:06
Michelle
And what was funny was, you know, literally the next day, the stocks, you know, had gone up 9%, you know.

00:07:47:25 – 00:07:49:09
Joseph
Still didn’t make it up to, you.

00:07:49:10 – 00:08:06:12
Michelle
Know, didn’t make it up to where they were during all of this. But definitely you’re seeing, you know, some of the changes from what you could see online. And, you know, social media, cast members were elated by it.

00:08:07:05 – 00:08:09:05
Joseph
There wasn’t anybody who wasn’t open.

00:08:09:05 – 00:08:10:29
Michelle
You know what it was? There were.

00:08:10:29 – 00:08:12:21
Joseph
Jerry Chapek got a Golden.

00:08:12:21 – 00:08:39:01
Michelle
Globe. Yeah. He got to walk away. But that’s the thing, is that so many people were, you know, because I think one of the other things that was kind of looming was there was another layoff that was that was going to be looming. And now, as far as I know, none of that is is in place. Now, granted, how long is it going to take for certain changes to go into effect?

00:08:39:01 – 00:08:55:07
Michelle
That’s what will be interesting to see and how many things that Chapek started are going to be undone. You know, because we know they’re not going to get rid of certain things, but are they going to start modifying? Well, let’s face.

00:08:55:07 – 00:09:11:18
Joseph
It, you know, he can’t do anything. If you want to if you want to play devil’s advocate, you can say, oh, well, he came in during the pandemic and that was really what burned him. But in reality, a lot of companies, everybody went through the pandemic.

00:09:11:26 – 00:09:12:09
Michelle
Right.

00:09:12:25 – 00:09:19:06
Joseph
And a lot of companies didn’t go into the pandemic with the same balance sheet that Disney did.

00:09:19:06 – 00:09:19:17
Michelle
Right.

00:09:19:27 – 00:09:33:12
Joseph
And somehow Chapek manages to wipe out thousands, 6% of that budget sheet after doing all the layoffs that he did, all the cutbacks that he did, all the penny pinching that he.

00:09:33:12 – 00:09:34:23
Michelle
Did right, he.

00:09:34:23 – 00:09:49:13
Joseph
Still managed to lose 36%. That’s just an astounding level of incompetence that I think you’ve seen in business, you know, since somebody bought a company for $44 billion and lost $20 billion the next day on it.

00:09:49:17 – 00:09:50:09
Michelle
Yeah. Yeah.

00:09:50:24 – 00:09:59:06
Joseph
Twitter being that company, obviously. So I think nobody was sad to see Chapek go.

00:09:59:07 – 00:09:59:19
Michelle
No.

00:09:59:23 – 00:10:03:09
Joseph
Even Chapek wasn’t because he just got his contract renewed.

00:10:03:15 – 00:10:03:27
Michelle
Right.

00:10:04:05 – 00:10:10:26
Joseph
So, you know, he’s getting paid for his full contract. You know, he’s getting a golden parachute to just walk away and not say anything.

00:10:10:27 – 00:10:11:15
Michelle
Right. Right.

00:10:11:16 – 00:10:16:15
Joseph
So he’s set for life at this point in time. He basically stepped in crap. And he’s set for life now.

00:10:16:16 – 00:10:16:27
Michelle
Yeah.

00:10:17:24 – 00:10:22:15
Joseph
What Disney I think is scared of is they’ve only got Bob Iger for two years.

00:10:22:15 – 00:10:22:25
Michelle
Right.

00:10:23:03 – 00:10:28:24
Joseph
So they need to groom a new successor in two years to have him ready.

00:10:28:27 – 00:10:29:09
Michelle
Right.

00:10:29:19 – 00:10:31:07
Joseph
Who’s that successor going to be?

00:10:31:08 – 00:10:54:27
Michelle
Well, and that’s the thing is there have been a couple of different articles that have come out with, you know, the proposed, you know, hey, this person’s, you know, ready to come up and this person’s ready to come up. So it definitely sounds like it’s going to be somebody that’s already in the Disney Corporation, whether or not it’s somebody that’s well known by, you know, other people.

00:10:55:07 – 00:10:59:08
Michelle
Problem was Chapek was from the corporation, too, so.

00:10:59:08 – 00:11:02:02
Joseph
Well, Chapek was from Parks, right.

00:11:02:02 – 00:11:06:21
Michelle
But he was still and that was what he ended up hurting. Right. You know, so much.

00:11:06:21 – 00:11:07:06
Joseph
Targeted the.

00:11:07:06 – 00:11:16:10
Michelle
Most. Right. Which is kind of shocking where if that’s where he was from. But then, of course, he also you had everything that happened with Scarlett Johansson and you had. Well, yeah, he screwed.

00:11:16:10 – 00:11:17:14
Joseph
The pooch on that one, too.

00:11:17:20 – 00:11:23:14
Michelle
So there was so much that that got hurt along the way of everything.

00:11:23:14 – 00:11:26:01
Joseph
Basically, anything he touched, he screwed.

00:11:26:01 – 00:11:29:00
Michelle
Up, right? Right. All the screaming. Okay, right.

00:11:29:06 – 00:11:39:03
Joseph
You’re coming in as the head of a company that literally prints money. It’s got more money than gone. All you have to do is not screw up.

00:11:39:04 – 00:11:39:16
Michelle
Right.

00:11:39:21 – 00:11:41:26
Joseph
And all he did was screw, right?

00:11:42:03 – 00:11:42:09
Michelle
Right.

00:11:42:10 – 00:11:44:25
Joseph
Everything he got involved with, he screwed up.

00:11:44:26 – 00:11:45:06
Michelle
Mm hmm.

00:11:45:27 – 00:11:57:03
Joseph
So to see him go on is a good thing. My concern is, who were the people that picked him in the first place? Right. They should be gone, too, because of how poor judgment they had.

00:11:57:04 – 00:11:58:06
Michelle
Right. Right.

00:11:58:15 – 00:12:06:12
Joseph
Because if they’re involved in picking the nets next successor, you’re back in the same boat. So where are you going to go with that?

00:12:07:11 – 00:12:22:18
Michelle
Yeah. So it’ll be, you know, interesting to see. It’s two years and a lot can happen in two years. And, you know, obviously not as much will be undone because I don’t think they’re.

00:12:22:24 – 00:12:23:21
Joseph
He doesn’t have time.

00:12:23:21 – 00:12:25:20
Michelle
To write. He doesn’t have time to undo it.

00:12:25:20 – 00:12:30:02
Joseph
He’s got to correct the ship right now and get back on course, get a successor going.

00:12:30:03 – 00:12:30:13
Michelle
Right.

00:12:30:18 – 00:12:34:29
Joseph
He doesn’t have the luxury of going back and retconning all the stuff that Chapek screwed up.

00:12:35:00 – 00:12:52:01
Michelle
Right. So, you know, again, how how quickly things will happen that will, you know, will will be, you know, left to say and maybe will actually be going sooner than, you know.

00:12:52:06 – 00:12:58:23
Joseph
There is a chance, you know, I’ll concede the point that there is a chance that we may be going back sooner than I had originally anticipated.

00:12:58:23 – 00:13:06:25
Michelle
Right. Because I even was was under the notion, you know, after we were just there in the summer, I was like, you know, I don’t know if I want to go back. And it was.

00:13:06:25 – 00:13:09:27
Joseph
Literally the first time I thought I didn’t get my money’s worth of Disney.

00:13:09:28 – 00:13:12:09
Michelle
Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely.

00:13:12:09 – 00:13:15:19
Joseph
And I’ve bitched and complained about Disney from day one because of.

00:13:15:23 – 00:13:16:23
Michelle
Oh, absolutely.

00:13:16:24 – 00:13:17:25
Joseph
Various things.

00:13:17:29 – 00:13:19:15
Michelle
Yeah, and I agree.

00:13:19:18 – 00:13:22:16
Joseph
Iger You know, I was down on Iger for the longest time.

00:13:22:18 – 00:13:22:29
Michelle
Mm hmm.

00:13:23:18 – 00:13:41:21
Joseph
Because I think he was completely overpaid. Now he comes back now, and he’s basically back. He was making about 54 with compensation. Right. So his compensation package right now is about 24. So he’s half of what he was at before. And that’s the vast majority of it is incentive based.

00:13:41:22 – 00:13:42:14
Michelle
Right. Right.

00:13:42:20 – 00:13:47:22
Joseph
So he’s got to do something to turn the company around.

00:13:47:23 – 00:13:48:14
Michelle
Mm hmm. Yeah.

00:13:49:09 – 00:14:00:13
Joseph
But as much as I was down on them before you, you really can’t knock him for some of the stuff that he did. I mean, he had probably one of the longest list of accomplishments of any Disney CEO ever.

00:14:00:14 – 00:14:00:24
Michelle
Right.

00:14:00:28 – 00:14:10:21
Joseph
Right. I mean, this guy had more wins than Babe Ruth. Mm hmm. He was just literally the golden child. And that was 15 years as CEO.

00:14:10:22 – 00:14:11:01
Michelle
Right.

00:14:11:10 – 00:14:16:00
Joseph
With a total of, I think it was 50 years or something like that with the company in general.

00:14:16:06 – 00:14:16:26
Michelle
Close to it.

00:14:17:12 – 00:14:40:03
Joseph
I mean, some of the stuff that he went down. Lucasfilm. Mm hmm. Pixar, Marvel. These are all the acquisitions that he made. So it was it was incredible. Some of the stuff that he’s done two years coming back. I mean, that’s a it’s amazing how much damage Chapek did in the short time. How was he there?

00:14:40:19 – 00:14:46:10
Michelle
999 days, according to a bunch of different people, which, you know.

00:14:46:10 – 00:14:49:00
Joseph
And he did a lot of damage in that amount of time.

00:14:49:01 – 00:15:19:28
Michelle
Yeah. And granted. Yes. Totally understand pandemic that put a lot of strain. But I think that’s where you needed to kind of, you know, everybody else is going through all these hard times. Don’t put the hard times on something that is expendable, really. You know, nobody needs to go on vacation. You know, they want to go on vacation.

00:15:19:28 – 00:15:55:24
Michelle
And that should have been where you had, you know, less of a strain. And what he ended up doing was raising prices, you know, for for so much of the stuff that it basically became a place for only the 1% to go. Yeah. You know, they they didn’t really care about the the value resorts. They didn’t care about, you know, the person that you know, the locals who want to go and escape, you know, a couple of hours a day.

00:15:56:02 – 00:16:07:27
Michelle
They wanted the people who were willing to to spend, you know, a week there in their high end places, you know, the Star Wars resort, like that’s been that.

00:16:07:27 – 00:16:09:08
Joseph
Big giant middle finger to the.

00:16:09:08 – 00:16:16:27
Michelle
Fans. Yeah, really? And you have people that are like, Ah, I did it once. I don’t need to ever really do it again. Oh, and they also.

00:16:17:00 – 00:16:17:18
Joseph
There’s Bryce.

00:16:17:24 – 00:16:39:25
Michelle
And I spent $6,000 for it. Like, that’s, that’s insane for when I could go on two weeks cruise for for that amount of money. Why would I want to spend two days in an all immersive ooh where now you know there have they have so much opening where it’s like all right well now it’s this whole immersive thing, but if nobody else is there, who’s there?

00:16:39:26 – 00:16:44:12
Michelle
Who are you going to immerse? Right. Who are you going to play along with?

00:16:44:18 – 00:16:49:17
Joseph
Well, that was that was one of the problems that they had with the the shift in philosophy.

00:16:49:18 – 00:16:49:24
Michelle
Right.

00:16:50:11 – 00:16:59:24
Joseph
And that shift in philosophy left people like us and a lot of other people who we’ve been we’ve gone down three times in one year.

00:16:59:25 – 00:17:01:02
Michelle
Right.

00:17:01:02 – 00:17:16:09
Joseph
Whenever you can’t be in the buying season passes and whoa, if you go three times, we get our money’s worth. I get my money’s worth by not buying the season passes in the first place. But for people like us, it it wasn’t practical for us to go down.

00:17:16:15 – 00:17:16:24
Michelle
Right.

00:17:17:11 – 00:17:20:28
Joseph
And they continued raising prices three times.

00:17:20:29 – 00:17:21:08
Michelle
Mm hmm.

00:17:21:15 – 00:17:36:11
Joseph
Now, every year, they raise their prices, and that’s expected. Right. Whether it’s justified or not. Three times this year, this calendar year, they’ve raised their prices. They just raised them again on the local season passes.

00:17:36:11 – 00:17:37:27
Michelle
Right. That’s insane. Right.

00:17:38:11 – 00:17:53:18
Joseph
So not only are they raising their prices at an enormous rate and we’re not talking 1%, 2%, we’re talking 10%, 13%. In some instances, they haven’t brought back anywhere near the stuff that they had taken out.

00:17:53:20 – 00:17:54:00
Michelle
Right.

00:17:54:14 – 00:18:02:08
Joseph
So you still don’t get the ambiance. You don’t get the experience. You don’t even get like some of the stores are closed down.

00:18:02:14 – 00:18:02:26
Michelle
Right.

00:18:03:01 – 00:18:14:11
Joseph
You know, when we were there, we went through Magic Kingdom. You’ve got to you’ve got stalls that that are not stores, but stores. Entire stores are shut down. It literally looks like.

00:18:14:21 – 00:18:41:02
Michelle
Was one when we won Disney. We noticed it more so in Hollywood studios, the one backlot area, right. The Little Mermaid show that’s been closed. So there’s nothing there. Then they had the little gift shop that was there. That’s completely closed. The playhouse, Disney that’s closed. They had a couple of characters, but that was really it. And that whole area used to have a whole bunch of stuff.

00:18:41:02 – 00:19:01:08
Michelle
Then back where the Muppet Store was, when you leave The Muppet Movie, that’s closed. So they have all these stores, you know, and all these areas where there’s nothing there. So you kind of walk there and you’re kind of like, this is kind of creepy and deserted. And like you said to Magic Kingdom.

00:19:01:17 – 00:19:05:02
Joseph
It’s like Disneyland, the inner city experience or something, right?

00:19:05:06 – 00:19:06:06
Michelle
And then, of course, you wanted.

00:19:06:06 – 00:19:08:04
Joseph
To see like graffiti on the walls and so.

00:19:08:04 – 00:19:28:25
Michelle
Forth. And then and you know, and then you have Epcot with all the construction that was going on, which, hey, that’s great. But again, like we’ve said before, you have all this construction and I’m still paying full price, right? For things that are in open, things that are closed, like, hmm, maybe you should give me a discount.

00:19:29:04 – 00:19:42:29
Joseph
Yeah, no. But instead, they’re finding new things for you to pay for. Well, you need to pay for your magic bands now. We don’t give away for free. You got to pay for your parking now, which I. It still blows my mind. Why? You have to pay for parking it at Disney.

00:19:43:13 – 00:19:44:14
Michelle
If you’re a resort guest.

00:19:44:14 – 00:19:55:24
Joseph
If you’re a resort, it makes no sense whatsoever. Right. Right. You got to pay for your refills now, too, because, oh, you got to chip the company. And it’s like, how many different ways are you going to nickel and dime people?

00:19:55:24 – 00:19:59:03
Michelle
And then Jeanie plus oh, god, that whole waste of.

00:19:59:08 – 00:20:07:25
Joseph
Time and effort and money, it’s just. Yeah. And this is. This is just the parks. This is just how he screwed the parks up.

00:20:08:03 – 00:20:08:15
Michelle
Yeah.

00:20:08:18 – 00:20:18:28
Joseph
This isn’t even outside of that. The movies and the. The terrible television that they’re churning out on Disney. Plus, now, just to say that they have fresh content, right.

00:20:18:28 – 00:20:35:16
Michelle
Which supposedly that’s one of the things that Iger is, you know, like, okay, we don’t need to have a new, you know, Star Wars series every six months or know like there’s too much let’s kind of, you know, turn. We don’t we.

00:20:35:16 – 00:20:38:27
Joseph
Don’t need a 12 episode series of a show that we only needed two episodes.

00:20:38:27 – 00:20:40:29
Michelle
Of. Right. Right. So, so.

00:20:41:20 – 00:21:02:20
Joseph
Anyway, the Bobs are back again. At least Iger is right. One Bob Chapek is sitting on a beach somewhere laughing it up now. Yes, I’m sure he’s where he winds up like working. You go after after, after literally nosediving the company for the entire time. You’re there. Who’s going to hire you at that point and somebody?

00:21:02:20 – 00:21:11:15
Michelle
Well, I’m sure there are some small entertainment companies that would would be willing to take him on or, you know.

00:21:11:24 – 00:21:14:15
Joseph
Something just to have the name, I guess.

00:21:15:02 – 00:21:15:19
Michelle
You know.

00:21:16:04 – 00:21:17:22
Joseph
Anyway, hopefully it gets better.

00:21:17:24 – 00:21:18:11
Michelle
Yeah, we’re.

00:21:18:11 – 00:21:19:13
Joseph
We’re holding out hope.

00:21:19:16 – 00:21:20:21
Michelle
Yep, absolutely.

00:21:21:29 – 00:22:02:18
Joseph
So we’re gonna take a quick break, and we’re going to come back and talk about some Walking Dead. We’ll be right back. For over seven years, the second Sith empire has been the premier community guild. In the online game, Star Wars, The Old Republic, with hundreds of friendly and helpful active members, a weekly schedule of nightly events, annual guild, meet and greets and an active community both on the Web and on Discord.

00:22:03:19 – 00:22:33:13
Joseph
The second season of Empire is more than your typical gaming group. We’re family. Join us on the Star Forge server for nightly events such as Operations, Flashpoints, World Boss Funds, Star Wars, Trivia Guild, Lottery, and much more. Visit us on the web today at W W W dark the second super empire dot com.

00:22:38:11 – 00:22:51:01
Joseph
Welcome back to insights into entertainment and never a talk a little bit about walking dead. So for the longest time, 11 years now ten years will tell.

00:22:51:26 – 00:22:53:09
Michelle
Well, it was 11 seasons.

00:22:53:09 – 00:23:03:00
Joseph
Ten seasons. Now, Walking Dead was what’s been described as the flagship of AMC. It really was the anchor show for AMC.

00:23:03:04 – 00:23:03:15
Michelle
Yeah.

00:23:04:19 – 00:23:36:17
Joseph
It’s spawned numerous spinoffs already. Finally came to a close. Yeah, very different ending than with the comics. I mean, the series itself had diverged from the comics quite some time back. I think it’s like when I think of series finales, the one that always sticks out in my mind is MASH, right? You know, the number of people that watch that was like record breaking was like people around the world watched it.

00:23:37:13 – 00:23:54:17
Joseph
I don’t think Walking Dead had nearly those numbers. Why do you think that is if it was such an important show on AMC? Have viewing habits changed? Is AMC not a major player in the entertainment of this type of thing?

00:23:54:23 – 00:24:30:27
Michelle
I’m not sure because I haven’t I didn’t look to see what the stats were for it ending. But I know viewership over the years had dropped because I actually had friends who were, you know, diehard Walking Dead fans and got to a certain point where it was like, Yeah, now I’m done and kind of checked out maybe halfway through, you know, the ten year span, the 11 year span of it, and just kind of got burnt out with it or it got a little too dark for them.

00:24:32:04 – 00:24:39:10
Michelle
You know, with everything that was going on and they kind of were like, Yeah, no, I’m done with it. And some people kind of like.

00:24:39:20 – 00:24:43:15
Joseph
A zombie apocalypse during a zombie apocalypse with Google.

00:24:44:00 – 00:25:30:06
Michelle
Wasn’t the best. Well, and that’s the thing. But I’m talking about even before, you know, COVID and and things like that, you know, that that there were some people that just kind of like checked out. But it was interesting, too, to see the couple of different documentaries that they they did, you know, talking about the fans and and how a show about, you know, survival and and and the apocalypse brought families together because you ended up getting people who normally wouldn’t sit down to watch a television show together, watching a television show and becoming friends with people online because they were watching it.

00:25:30:06 – 00:25:36:18
Michelle
And that was kind of how you started watching it because you weren’t interested in watching it. When I started watching it.

00:25:37:07 – 00:25:40:18
Joseph
Yeah, zombie shows really are not not really my thing.

00:25:40:19 – 00:25:41:03
Michelle
Right.

00:25:41:04 – 00:25:51:10
Joseph
But it’s funny because as I kind of watched over my shoulder while you were watching it, it became very apparent that it was a zombie show that had very little to do with zombies.

00:25:51:10 – 00:25:56:11
Michelle
Right. Because it was really about human survival and human interaction and how you how.

00:25:56:18 – 00:25:57:15
Joseph
Terrible human.

00:25:57:15 – 00:26:18:22
Michelle
Being, how terrible we are and in a crisis situation and who rises above and, you know, who becomes strong and who becomes weak and. And what skill sets do you have to to bring you forward? Right. You know, how are you marketable, you know, in this new environment?

00:26:18:26 – 00:26:21:08
Joseph
What’s your resume in the zombie apocalypse look like?

00:26:21:21 – 00:26:44:00
Michelle
Not so good. I don’t, you know. And so that’s what I think was kind of interesting because again, that was one of the things when I started watching it, there was a friend of mine where we would watch it together and we would text while, you know, like, Oh my God, did you see that? And then it got to a certain point where they didn’t watch it anymore.

00:26:44:13 – 00:27:05:05
Michelle
And I used to watch it, you know, in the living room. And then I was like, you know, I’m going to go downstairs and watch it on the big TV. And that’s when, you know, you weren’t sitting there watching it. You were, you know, on your computer and you would kind of let’s go, you know, you’d look over and then you finally you sat with me and you’d ask questions, who’s that?

00:27:05:05 – 00:27:12:25
Michelle
Who’s this? And, you know, and then you decided, well, I have to watch it from the beginning. And you started season one.

00:27:12:29 – 00:27:27:07
Joseph
And that was that was a painful trek going all the way back to season one, watching it from season one, episode one all the way through. I think I started watching with you in season seven. I think.

00:27:27:07 – 00:27:28:16
Michelle
Maybe.

00:27:29:09 – 00:27:36:12
Joseph
And, and it’s funny because I binged all those seasons inside of, I think two months, right?

00:27:36:12 – 00:27:50:12
Michelle
I mean, it’s so funny. Was you figure it’d been seven, eight years since I saw it. So there were things that I really didn’t remember because it was one of those things where once I watched an episode, I never watched it again. I didn’t go well and.

00:27:50:13 – 00:27:56:19
Joseph
It’s a good thing I binged it because if I had to suffer through that whole season, walk to walk about.

00:27:57:00 – 00:27:57:04
Michelle
Yeah.

00:27:57:09 – 00:28:03:01
Joseph
With, with Terminus and everything. If I had to suffer through an entire season like that, I would have stopped watching the show.

00:28:03:02 – 00:28:20:10
Michelle
And that’s and again, I think that you have people who maybe didn’t start watching it at the beginning and did what you did and binged because it kept their interest because they knew, oh, well, the good stuff is coming, right? You know, I.

00:28:20:12 – 00:28:29:12
Joseph
Well, and then and then I, I, I did the extra homework and I went out and I read on the Walking Dead Wikipedia.

00:28:29:12 – 00:28:30:19
Michelle
Wikipedia, right.

00:28:31:01 – 00:28:34:11
Joseph
The summaries for every single one of the comics.

00:28:34:11 – 00:28:35:03
Michelle
For every.

00:28:35:03 – 00:28:35:15
Joseph
Edition.

00:28:35:15 – 00:28:42:17
Michelle
Of a comic that was actually so before. Was it before? No, because I think I started reading the comics.

00:28:42:17 – 00:28:45:07
Joseph
You’re reading them first because you were reading the compendiums.

00:28:45:07 – 00:29:13:12
Michelle
First, right? I was reading because I had two of the compendiums. So I got up to, you know, the Glenn stuff. So I knew that was coming. And again, what was nice was there were certain things that were happening that I knew about but I didn’t know about and things like that. And that’s how a lot of the fans were, because there were a lot of fans that went back and started reading the comments or comics or had read the comics to begin with and now wanted to see the show.

00:29:13:18 – 00:29:30:27
Michelle
So it was nice when there were things that were different to kind of keep you on edge. Yeah. And then of course, you have the whole Glenn thing where everyone’s like, Oh gosh, this is when Glenn goes. And then all of a sudden Abraham goes to and you’re like, Whoa, that well.

00:29:30:27 – 00:29:35:03
Joseph
And, you know, to the show’s credit, they didn’t pop his eyeball out like they did in the comics.

00:29:35:06 – 00:29:49:27
Michelle
Well, that was what I was glad. I was glad Pop was eyeballs. Right? So that’s where and that’s where a lot of people were like, nope, I’m done because now. But I think that was good because then at least you didn’t have a full blueprint.

00:29:49:27 – 00:29:52:02
Joseph
Of and that was the thing it.

00:29:52:02 – 00:29:52:28
Michelle
Was to watch.

00:29:52:28 – 00:30:00:03
Joseph
Ahead. It stuck pretty close to the comics up to that point, and that was where the big diversions started happening.

00:30:00:07 – 00:30:01:29
Michelle
And that’s where you had the divide it.

00:30:02:01 – 00:30:10:28
Joseph
You started out with characters in the show that weren’t in the comics, right? You had character development with, like, Carol. That was completely different.

00:30:10:29 – 00:30:11:11
Michelle
Mm hmm.

00:30:11:25 – 00:30:33:01
Joseph
And that was freaky. The interaction with her and Rick and his wife. And that was weird stuff in the comics, right? You didn’t get any of that stuff. And I think ultimately it’s funny characters that didn’t make it either didn’t exist in the comics or didn’t make it very far into comics, wind up being the ones that lived.

00:30:33:10 – 00:30:34:17
Michelle
You know, in the end.

00:30:34:28 – 00:30:36:00
Joseph
And are getting their own spin.

00:30:36:00 – 00:31:02:20
Michelle
Offs right and now are getting their own spin offs. So yeah, kind of, you know, it. I think you still had a lot of people that watched and you know, but again, because it’s broken off into a couple of different, you know, spin offs, it’s it’s not going going away anytime soon, obviously. You know, for a while.

00:31:02:26 – 00:31:20:04
Joseph
I honestly I think I think that was one of the things that was very anti-climatic for me, was, all right, so The Walking Dead is is is done. This is the end of the Walking Dead, except for these other two shows that are going on, these two new shows that are coming in. And it was like.

00:31:21:13 – 00:31:26:09
Michelle
It’s not over, right? Because, you know, because tech was very.

00:31:26:09 – 00:31:48:28
Joseph
Strict, like when when MASH was over, they had MASH spinoffs, but they were the characters in completely different modes. Mm hmm. You know, like you had the after mash where they came back to the States and they were in a hospital or something like that. So it wasn’t the same type of storylines where they’re still in the zombie apocalypse and just in a different town or.

00:31:48:28 – 00:32:02:09
Michelle
A different snobby apocalypse hasn’t ended. You have, you know, one group that’s going up to New York. You have another person that’s crossing the Atlantic and getting to France.

00:32:02:10 – 00:32:04:08
Joseph
I don’t know how he’s getting a motorcycle there.

00:32:04:08 – 00:32:33:02
Michelle
I don’t know how he’s doing that either. And then you have, you know, the the ongoing story of the of Fear, The Walking Dead. I don’t even know where they are now, because that was one show that I only saw two seasons of. And and, you know, I kind of stopped watching that one. And then you have, you know, the one show World Beyond that was just a two season and that was it.

00:32:33:02 – 00:32:41:03
Joseph
Well, and I think the problem you run into with World Beyond is they establish a quasi civilization.

00:32:41:03 – 00:32:41:15
Michelle
Right.

00:32:41:27 – 00:32:46:18
Joseph
A military base, quasi civilization there. That is huge.

00:32:46:18 – 00:32:46:27
Michelle
Right.

00:32:46:27 – 00:32:52:04
Joseph
And dominant. And you’ve yet to see that really spill into any of the other ones, right?

00:32:52:08 – 00:32:53:12
Michelle
It’s a little end.

00:32:53:12 – 00:32:55:25
Joseph
Of The Walking Dead with the wreck and stuff like.

00:32:55:25 – 00:33:22:28
Michelle
That. Right. I see. Because now that’s awful. Right. So now we’re going to see so really kind of world beyond was setting up the Rick in motion right now from what we knew Rick the Rick storyline because we knew Rick was still alive. You know, they hadn’t you know, they alleged that he was still alive. Right. Every thing that had been planned was that was supposed to be a bunch of movies.

00:33:23:02 – 00:33:49:00
Michelle
Right? Well, now the movies got scratched and now it’s going to be a limited a limited series. Right. So now we’re going to find out, okay, so what the heck happened? And obviously, we know it had something to do with the military operation that was part of world beyond. So that was kind of like World Beyond was really setting up the whole Rick in motion storyline, right?

00:33:49:00 – 00:33:58:24
Michelle
You know, with that the whole going to New York thing, we don’t know why that was happening and why the two people you we’ve got.

00:33:58:24 – 00:34:02:23
Joseph
To have Kurt Russell show up as Snake Plissken to really make it.

00:34:02:23 – 00:34:08:09
Michelle
Work. That would be funny but that that’s the thing is why is it Negan and.

00:34:09:12 – 00:34:12:04
Joseph
Which they don’t established by the end of the season.

00:34:12:04 – 00:34:52:24
Michelle
Finale. Right. Because the only thing that we find out from series finale is Rick and Michonne are, you know, like basically that was it. We don’t know why Daryl is going to France. We don’t know why, you know Negan and why can’t I think of her name? Maggie. Maggie. Thank you are going to New York because we know you know at the end Negan is married he has a kid on the way she part of the thing that they end up you know and that’s the other thing too is because they finished Walking Dead with kind of, all right, we’ve taken the town back.

00:34:52:24 – 00:35:09:19
Michelle
We’ve you know, we’ve we’ve gotten rid of the bad guy. And, you know, now everything should be good. So why is everybody need to go off, right? You know, like you finally are in a good place. Why you leave? Yeah. Given.

00:35:09:24 – 00:35:16:00
Joseph
Given the reputation over 11 seasons, it’s entirely possible that Ezekiel kicks them out because they seem to want everything.

00:35:16:02 – 00:35:19:18
Michelle
Yeah, you know, I mean, they’re like, Hey, yeah.

00:35:19:24 – 00:35:21:29
Joseph
You guys are related to Bob Chapek, aren’t you?

00:35:22:27 – 00:35:39:07
Michelle
You need to get out, so. Yeah, you know, it’ll be interesting, you know, to the to see, you know. So you have the three new series that you have, Walking Dead, Daryl Dixon.

00:35:39:07 – 00:35:41:08
Joseph
We really have to come up with a better title.

00:35:41:08 – 00:35:54:08
Michelle
Than that, you know. And now the other thing, too, that we from I guess it was from World Beyond was the the fast zombies, you know. Well, yeah, that’s right. You got you got the climate, you got.

00:35:54:08 – 00:35:54:27
Joseph
Runners.

00:35:54:27 – 00:35:56:20
Michelle
And you got the ones that can open doors.

00:35:57:05 – 00:36:00:12
Joseph
You got the articulate ones, the guys that can pick stuff up.

00:36:00:21 – 00:36:24:28
Michelle
Right. So what is it that makes him want to go to, to, to France? Now, that was also supposed to be where Carol was supposed to be going with him. But because they were actually filming in France, which scene which seemed kind of odd during this whole time period, why you wouldn’t just do, you know, a set or something stateside.

00:36:25:15 – 00:36:40:25
Michelle
She’s not going. So they had to kind of redo that whole story storyline. Then you have The Walking Dead, Dead City, which is the one with Maggie and and Negan. Again, very morbid.

00:36:40:27 – 00:36:43:24
Joseph
Someone who, by the way, is from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

00:36:43:24 – 00:36:45:21
Michelle
She was working in Cherry Hill, our.

00:36:45:21 – 00:36:46:02
Joseph
Neck of the.

00:36:46:02 – 00:37:11:16
Michelle
Woods. And then obviously we have the currently untitled series which will feature Rick and Michonne, which we’ve, you know, they kind of hinted at that during the last episode of The Walking Dead. Plus, you have the returning of Fear. The Walking Dead World Beyond Again was just a two episode thing, two seasons and and that was it.

00:37:11:16 – 00:37:16:20
Joseph
So yeah. So Walking Dead’s over but long.

00:37:16:20 – 00:37:17:20
Michelle
Maggie really dead.

00:37:18:08 – 00:37:48:27
Joseph
Long live the walking dead. So we’ll see where we wind up with it. Yeah, we’ll see if they’re worth watching moving forward. So we’re taking another quick break. We’ll be back. And we’re going to talk about some of the things we’ve been doing as far as pop culture, the seasonally type stuff, stuff. We’ll be right back.

00:37:48:27 – 00:38:26:05
Michelle
Insights into Teens, a podcast series exploring the issues and challenges of today’s youth, talking to real teens about real teen problems and explore issues from braces to puberty, social anxiety to financial responsibility. Each week we talk about the topics concerning today’s youth. We look at how the issues affect teens, how to cope with these issues, and how parents, friends and loved ones can help teens handle these challenges.

00:38:26:05 – 00:38:46:20
Michelle
Check out our video episodes on YouTube.com Backslash Insights into things. Catch our audio versions on podcast are insights into teens XCOM or on the web at Insights Into Things XCOM.

00:38:51:18 – 00:39:09:03
Joseph
Welcome back to Insights Into Entertainment. So we’ve been out and about. We had two things actually on the show notes today, but we have a third one to add to it from last week. The first one was we attended the very first monster mania at Oakes Greater Philadelphia.

00:39:09:05 – 00:39:13:00
Michelle
I think they’ve actually done one there before where we.

00:39:13:00 – 00:39:14:01
Joseph
Did the outside.

00:39:14:06 – 00:39:19:01
Michelle
We did the outside one. I thought they’ve done one there before, but for some reason I.

00:39:19:01 – 00:39:20:02
Joseph
Thought this was the first.

00:39:20:02 – 00:39:20:11
Michelle
One.

00:39:20:21 – 00:39:21:14
Joseph
It was our first.

00:39:21:16 – 00:39:22:08
Michelle
It was after.

00:39:22:08 – 00:39:23:19
Joseph
All. So we’ll just go with that.

00:39:23:20 – 00:39:37:03
Michelle
We’ll go with that. It was our first one and Monster Mania has always been kind of one of our one of our local events that we.

00:39:37:10 – 00:39:38:28
Joseph
We’re not married to it. We don’t go.

00:39:38:28 – 00:40:05:13
Michelle
To every we we we were going kind of like, oh, maybe we’ll go. The biggest problem with monster mania was the the venue. Yeah. Because they would do it in Cherry Hill, they would do a maryland version as well. And the problem with the Cherry Hill is that it was at a a nice hotel, but unfortunately hardly any parking, very crowded area.

00:40:05:24 – 00:40:13:17
Michelle
They did finally start kind of spreading it out throughout the years. But again, just in general, you’re.

00:40:13:17 – 00:40:14:12
Joseph
On top of it.

00:40:14:15 – 00:40:30:29
Michelle
Right? Even pre-pandemic, you were very much on top of each other. And and, you know, parking just not being, you know, and I always felt bad for anybody that was actually staying there as a guest and had no idea what was going on.

00:40:30:29 – 00:40:51:13
Joseph
I think I told you years ago I had a friend of mine who he had a cousin or somebody who was attending a wedding reception the same weekend watch. And they come down off the elevator and they’re getting ready to go to the wedding reception wherever the ballroom was. And all they see is all these people dressed in horror costumes, walking.

00:40:51:13 – 00:40:55:18
Joseph
Yeah. To go to go to the conventions, like, I guess that makes a heck of an impression.

00:40:55:18 – 00:41:08:00
Michelle
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, so it’s one that we didn’t always go to because of, you know, the venue and knowing, oh my God, it’s going to take us forever to find parking.

00:41:08:06 – 00:41:15:00
Joseph
And it was also a little high priced for the for the experience so it was we never really attended the panels and it was.

00:41:15:00 – 00:41:39:03
Michelle
Always a well and we really didn’t were there too many panels. But we do have meetings, a couple of shows and that was really, really it. So this time they were doing it at Oaks, which is probably our favorite venue of all the venues. One because it’s very spacious. Whatever we’ve been to has not felt crowded. We’ve done retro con there.

00:41:39:03 – 00:42:16:22
Michelle
We did the Greater Philadelphia, we did the great Adelphia there, and now we can add monster mania as well. One free parking, tons of parking. And it’s such a big venue that they usually have more than one event going on at a time. And you don’t feel like there’s more than one event going on at a time. The good news is because they had such a good turnout, they are going back to Oaks next year.

00:42:17:16 – 00:42:27:26
Michelle
We did do during I guess it was last summer or before the summer last May. They had done an outdoor it was basically a flea market.

00:42:27:26 – 00:42:28:24
Joseph
It was like a sweat lodge.

00:42:28:27 – 00:42:42:06
Michelle
It was a sweat lodge. So it was nice to see them, you know, back here inside. And what was nice was the one area they had a whole bunch celebrities, so that if you wanted to party.

00:42:42:24 – 00:42:49:12
Joseph
It was set up in such a way that you had very organized, very large aisles for your venue.

00:42:49:12 – 00:42:49:22
Michelle
Yes.

00:42:50:06 – 00:42:57:07
Joseph
Nothing was crowded. You had an entire other area for your panels with plenty of seating.

00:42:57:07 – 00:42:58:09
Michelle
Right. It was.

00:42:58:09 – 00:42:59:09
Joseph
Sign up for any.

00:42:59:24 – 00:43:00:05
Michelle
And all.

00:43:00:09 – 00:43:00:29
Joseph
Of the below.

00:43:01:09 – 00:43:09:06
Michelle
It was actually open air. So, you know, if you happen to be walking by, it was like, oh, so-and-so is speaking. We’re like, oh, do they sit down for.

00:43:09:06 – 00:43:22:21
Joseph
Celebrities in the back room? They had the food off to the side. It was so well done. I mean, of all the conventions that we’ve gone to, I think it was probably one of the best layouts that they’ve had. Yeah, all the conventions we’ve gone to.

00:43:22:21 – 00:43:23:15
Michelle
Yeah, yeah.

00:43:23:18 – 00:43:34:13
Joseph
I was very happy with the experience. I was very happy with the fact that I wasn’t elbowing people left and right. Plenty of space, very well done will definitely be going.

00:43:34:13 – 00:43:38:26
Michelle
And again, like I said, they’ve already booked it. They, they signed their control.

00:43:38:29 – 00:43:45:27
Joseph
Our vendors, they must have had, you know, 30, 40% more vendors over than they do because you can, you can house.

00:43:45:27 – 00:43:47:03
Michelle
That many them. Right. Right.

00:43:47:04 – 00:43:49:08
Joseph
They could house that many in Cherry Hill.

00:43:49:08 – 00:43:56:20
Michelle
Yeah. So definitely, you know, if you’re a fan of the monster conventions, this is definitely one.

00:43:56:25 – 00:44:04:13
Joseph
Even if you’re a fan of just pop culture because of the increased number of vendors. Yeah, it wasn’t just horror stuff.

00:44:04:13 – 00:44:04:25
Michelle
Right.

00:44:05:03 – 00:44:05:21
Joseph
Which was really.

00:44:05:21 – 00:44:16:14
Michelle
Nice. Yeah. Yeah. And they have, you know, a couple of, you know, other vendors there, you know, selling coffee and pickles and and other things.

00:44:16:18 – 00:44:20:27
Joseph
Yeah, but you had sci fi there. You, right? Typical pop culture. You had movie stuff.

00:44:20:27 – 00:44:23:03
Michelle
There because you always you know who.

00:44:23:04 – 00:44:23:20
Joseph
Vendors.

00:44:23:20 – 00:44:34:17
Michelle
There, right? Cause you usually always get a vendor who not only has their sci fi or their horror stuff, but, you know, they have their their other stuff. Right as well. So.

00:44:35:01 – 00:44:40:10
Joseph
So before we move on a the next one on the list, let’s talk about what we did this weekend since we’re on a convention.

00:44:40:21 – 00:44:58:22
Michelle
Sure. So for our second year in a row now, we have gone down to Maryland and gone to Ocean City Comic-Con. You found out about this a couple of years ago through a coworker whose husband happens to be one of the.

00:45:00:10 – 00:45:01:06
Joseph
One of the organizers.

00:45:01:06 – 00:45:02:13
Michelle
One of the organizers of.

00:45:02:13 – 00:45:06:23
Joseph
It, who also happens to be a local artist down there as well. That’s how he got involved with right?

00:45:06:23 – 00:45:17:12
Michelle
So that’s how he got involved with it. So last year was the first year that that we went, we made a weekend of it because we don’t live that close to so it’s.

00:45:17:12 – 00:45:20:03
Joseph
Just so much fun. I broke a rib down there. So.

00:45:21:03 – 00:45:22:13
Michelle
So much fun.

00:45:22:13 – 00:45:23:28
Joseph
Didn’t have that much fun this time.

00:45:24:06 – 00:45:47:17
Michelle
Thank goodness. You know, but nice is they do it around this time of year and there’s other things going on. Mm hmm. Yeah, during the time of year. So if you do want make a weekend getaway, there’s other things to do. A number of the restaurants are open. It’s not going to be as crowded and busy as it is during the summer.

00:45:47:17 – 00:46:07:19
Michelle
You don’t have as many of like it’s more of the big hotels that are open. Right. You know, the little small mom and pop ones aren’t available, but the bigger resorts are. There’s one of the resorts that partners with the Comic Con. So if you grew down, you get a discount.

00:46:07:20 – 00:46:10:01
Joseph
The Grand Resort and spa, right?

00:46:10:06 – 00:46:13:04
Michelle
Even though nothing with the spa is open during snow.

00:46:13:05 – 00:46:15:02
Joseph
Nor is it particularly grand either.

00:46:15:02 – 00:46:26:22
Michelle
So. Well, I think the the room we were in this time looked like it had been renovated versus the last possible, you know, last year. But Winter Fest is going on at that time.

00:46:27:10 – 00:46:30:18
Joseph
You can you can you can do a pub crawl with a bunch of drunk chairs.

00:46:30:18 – 00:46:47:27
Michelle
And SantaCon was going on that weekend as well. Where I don’t know if they do it on purpose, but it SantaCon was going on last year the same time. So that was that was kind of interesting. The boardwalk a bunch of, you know, the boardwalk stuff is open now.

00:46:47:28 – 00:46:50:27
Joseph
You’re not hungry. You’re not going to get fruit on the boardwalk.

00:46:50:29 – 00:47:16:22
Michelle
Unless you just want fries, fries. But they’re not open terribly late, so you can’t do the convention til 5:00 and think, Oh, well, now I’m going to go to the boardwalk for a couple of hours. So you do have to kind of look to see what time, you know, places are open. Two, we tried two new places to eat and both were were really good, so we would highly recommend that.

00:47:16:26 – 00:47:27:26
Michelle
So again, you know, for us it’s about a two and a half hour ride and makes a nice little, you know, weekend, you know, getaway.

00:47:27:26 – 00:47:51:17
Joseph
So so this year, they actually expanded the show floor. They had a 30% more space here. They opened up a back room. I have it on good authority that they’re going to be expanding it again next year. They improved their food process. They improved their ticketing process. They’re looking into doing online ticketing sales next year as well to speed that process up.

00:47:51:17 – 00:48:13:08
Joseph
We were very fortunate. We bought them at the hotel ahead of time, so we were able to get right in. They also are looking not next year but possibly the following year to expand it to two days. So what’s really nice is it’s a it’s a great convention and it’s a convention that they’re taking the profits and pouring it back into it and making it better.

00:48:13:08 – 00:48:13:23
Joseph
Better.

00:48:13:24 – 00:48:14:04
Michelle
Yeah.

00:48:14:07 – 00:48:27:25
Joseph
So just over two years of going, we’ve seen it get better and they’re making it even better after that. So it’s, it’s a, you know, it’s a local convention run by locals, but it’s people who are passionate.

00:48:28:00 – 00:48:28:09
Michelle
Right?

00:48:28:10 – 00:48:34:08
Joseph
It’s local artists who are running it. Yeah. So they know what a convention needs to have to be successful.

00:48:34:08 – 00:48:35:03
Michelle
Right. Right.

00:48:35:21 – 00:48:50:26
Joseph
So it’s kind of a breath of fresh air to see that kind of thing. It’s not some corporate conglomeration who’s just out there churning out conventions to make money. It’s people who are there at the conventions which you can really tell the difference.

00:48:50:26 – 00:49:14:03
Michelle
Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that, you know, that we commented on and when you had talked to your your coworker about it, they said, yeah, that that was kind of the point. Most conventions that you go to, you have, you know, here’s this vendor aisle and this vendor out and here’s all of our artists. We kind of put them in artist’s alley, you know, away.

00:49:14:10 – 00:49:36:18
Michelle
And you have a lot of people that never even go down artists alley because they don’t they’re not interested in all of that. And, you know, and and in some cases, it’s a shame because there are some really good artists there, you know, that that just want to be recognized and what was nice was here they mixed them in with everybody else.

00:49:36:24 – 00:50:00:08
Michelle
So it wasn’t a here is just the vendors selling this and here’s just the people doing this. Here’s a mix of everything. So you have, you know, an artist next to somebody else. So if it was something that you weren’t interested in, the artist, okay, so you walk right past them or, you know, given art and you look at the next person or maybe because you’re looking at the one vendor, Oh, there’s an artist here.

00:50:00:08 – 00:50:12:17
Michelle
Oh, let me look and see, see what you have. So that was kind of nice that it was kind of blended. Yeah. A little bit better than some of the other. You know, conventions that we gone to.

00:50:13:09 – 00:50:25:15
Joseph
So Ocean City Comic-Con definitely recommend that again. Before we do go, let’s talk seasonal stuff. Sure. We’ve done one so far. We may be doing another one this weekend. What we do so far.

00:50:25:15 – 00:51:01:02
Michelle
So we did Night of Lights at creamy acres. So this was one that when they started doing the lights, it was only a wagon ride through. You weren’t driving through, so you had to be in one of their wagons riding through. And then with the pandemic, they changed it over so that you could drive your own car. So this year they actually brought back the wagons, but you’re still able to drive your car through, which is nice because then you don’t have to, you know, especially if it’s cold or the weather is questionable.

00:51:01:02 – 00:51:02:12
Michelle
You don’t have to worry about or if their.

00:51:02:12 – 00:51:03:10
Joseph
Music is terrible.

00:51:03:16 – 00:51:31:14
Michelle
Right? Then you can listen to your own music. So this is one that that we we’ve done the past couple of years. It’s a little local for us. And what’s nice is after, you know, you’re done going through, they do have a little shop area. You can go and see Santa. They do have fire pits now because I think last year, I don’t know if they had I don’t think they were doing fire pits just yet.

00:51:31:24 – 00:51:56:14
Michelle
No, I can’t remember. So they had fire pits. You could buy a little s’mores kit, which was four bucks or something to make two s’mores. But hey, you know, but they had a little bit more food available. They had like a bakery, a bakery area, and then they had like cheesesteaks and chicken fingers and, you know, some fried stuff, all that.

00:51:56:14 – 00:51:57:00
Joseph
Christmasy.

00:51:57:00 – 00:52:19:15
Michelle
Food, all that Christmasy. And then they have a couple of characters, you know, walk here, creepy, creepy characters. But it’s nice because it’s a it’s a local farm that does this. You can buy your tickets online or you can buy them there. And, you know, a nice little enjoyable drive through, you know, Christmas light display. All right.

00:52:19:15 – 00:52:21:17
Joseph
I’m going to put you on the spot. What are we doing this weekend?

00:52:22:05 – 00:52:28:02
Michelle
So we are probably depending on what the weather is. I’m guessing maybe Shady Brook.

00:52:28:02 – 00:52:28:15
Joseph
Yeah.

00:52:29:00 – 00:52:41:22
Michelle
Probably. We also are fortunate enough that deer land, which they they happen to do a drive thru one as well. So maybe we’ll, we’ll give them a try.

00:52:42:05 – 00:52:46:15
Joseph
Well in Shady Brook is probably the biggest in our area. That was up in Bucks County.

00:52:46:16 – 00:52:46:28
Michelle
Right.

00:52:46:28 – 00:52:47:28
Joseph
Pennsylvania.

00:52:47:28 – 00:52:52:29
Michelle
Right. That one’s further for us to to go to and depending on what the weather is like.

00:52:53:01 – 00:53:05:29
Joseph
And usually what we’ll do is if it’s a decent day we’ll go up what peddlers village will stay there or hit there and late afternoon they turn their lights on fairly early and you get to enjoy those lights. And then on the way home.

00:53:06:05 – 00:53:06:27
Michelle
We draw, we’ll.

00:53:06:27 – 00:53:09:10
Joseph
Hit we’ll hit shady shady.

00:53:09:10 – 00:53:23:03
Michelle
Borough. Right. And if you know, because I think the last time we went, I think it started raining when we got done. So we didn’t do any of the fire pits. Because that’s another thing, too, is they started having fire pits, but you actually had to make reservations or they had private.

00:53:23:08 – 00:53:23:26
Joseph
Very private.

00:53:23:26 – 00:53:26:07
Michelle
Ones, but they had public one too.

00:53:26:07 – 00:53:28:22
Joseph
Where the fight for a couple of chicks on the bench.

00:53:28:22 – 00:53:32:00
Michelle
Right. Right. So. Well, we’ll see. We’ll see how it goes.

00:53:32:00 – 00:53:36:09
Joseph
It’s always it’s always that fun part of fighting around the fire that we love to do around the hall.

00:53:36:09 – 00:53:39:27
Michelle
But now we have our own, you know, fire pits.

00:53:40:00 – 00:53:41:13
Joseph
Right. We have to assemble that.

00:53:41:13 – 00:53:42:14
Michelle
We have to assemble that.

00:53:42:18 – 00:53:45:10
Joseph
Find stuff to burn where we throw in furniture and stuff in the.

00:53:45:10 – 00:53:47:25
Michelle
Fire. You got anything you need to burn? Yeah, yeah.

00:53:48:00 – 00:53:49:24
Joseph
Bring it over. Just make sure it’s cut down the real.

00:53:49:24 – 00:53:50:18
Michelle
Small, right.

00:53:50:25 – 00:54:00:28
Joseph
Big pit. So, anyway, I think that’s all we had for the show this week. Hopefully we’ll be back on a regular cadence moving forward now.

00:54:01:00 – 00:54:01:19
Michelle
Yeah, we’ll see.

00:54:02:16 – 00:54:08:25
Joseph
We’ll we’ll see about that. I, I took a couple of weeks off because I just wasn’t feeling up to it, so.

00:54:08:25 – 00:54:09:18
Michelle
Right, right.

00:54:09:19 – 00:54:36:00
Joseph
Moving forward, hopefully will be a little more. Before we do go, though, I do want to again, once again want to ask you to subscribe to the podcast. You can find audio and video versions of our podcast listeners insights into things we’re available in Pandora, Castro, Stitcher, Pod Bing, Buzz Brown. Any place you can find a podcast these days, you can also find this show listeners insights in entertainment as well on your podcast listings.

00:54:37:06 – 00:54:59:14
Joseph
Feel free to email us right into us comments and insights into things. Com Hit us up on Twitter. We do accept DMS. If you want to send some over with suggestions or just feedback on how we’re doing, you can hit us at Twitter.com slash insights, underscore things. I’m stealing all your lines here on I.

00:54:59:16 – 00:55:01:14
Michelle
Yeah. Sorry. It’s okay.

00:55:01:14 – 00:55:02:20
Joseph
You’re next. You do right.

00:55:03:00 – 00:55:27:22
Michelle
So you can also find us on Facebook at Facebook dot com backslash insights into things podcast. You can find us on Instagram if I ever decide to post there again on Instagram dot com backslash insights into things, but obviously the best place to go would be our official website, which has links to everything that we do, and that is insights into things dot com.

00:55:28:09 – 00:55:29:22
Joseph
That’s it. Number one in the books.

00:55:29:26 – 00:55:57:22
Michelle
Have a good week, everyone. Bye bye.