For the main topic this month, we head back to Pleasure Island for more fun and excitement. This is Part IV and if you haven’t enjoyed Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3, we highly recommend you take a listen back as these were recorded years ago!  How gives us a little recap of how each episode went in the past.

For Episode 88, we are ready to Ride the Movies! Universal Studios in the late 80s brought their A-Game to central Florida and Back to the Future: The Ride was one of their top attractions.  For this episode, we solely focus on Back to the Future and go from start to finish, from development to closing. How is our lead this month and for all of us having experienced this, the movie quotes are plentiful and the ride experiences come from all directions.

We go through the entire facility, the pre-show, and even the ride mechanics. The neat part about this ride is many people have documented it over the years, including the BTTF Bluray’s that include the ride in a somewhat remastered format. The ride was so timeless in that you really felt as though you were stepping into the movies which we all know and loved. As How guides us through the spacetime continuum, we are given tons of descriptive visuals and walkthroughs about the entire ride.  For reference, we touch on the Back to the Future Visual Guide, which has a full history on this ride as well.

As we wrap up this episode, let us know your thoughts on the ‘Good Neighbors’ episodes and if you would like us to branch out more often. While this won’t be done regularly, we are always interested in the history of Central Florida and all the fun tourist spots in the area. Thanks so much for listening!

This mini-episode is a compliment to our 2022 holiday episode.  We promised we'd eventually track down the fellow responsible for bringing the Lights of Winter to EPCOT Center.  Brian and Todd talk to Jim Heffelfinger whose 20 year career with Walt Disney World began as stage manager at the Hoop Dee Doo Musical Review at Pioneer Hall (where he met and shares a great story about our friend Billy Flanigan).

Over the next two decades he worked with Disney Legend Ron Logan and the rest of the entertainment team to bring Christmas as we know it to EPCOT, Fantasmic to Florida, the Muppets to Hollywood Boulevard, the holidays and a parade to Animal Kingdom and the Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights to Disney-MGM Studios.

Some of his shows, like Beauty & The Beast Live on Stage are still running today much as he designed them while others are very fondly remembered.

This is a fun interview where you’ll learn a lot and, of course, we ask him for memories of Ron Logan and Dick Nunis and invite him to a future RetroMagic event.

Jim Heffelfinger is an unsung hero of holidays in Walt Disney World and many beloved live shows. Enjoy the interview.

Welcome to Episode 87 of the RetroWDW Podcast: Hungry For Hollywood - We appreciate your support and hope you have been enjoying each and every episode. Be sure to check out some of our previous shows from over the years. We have visited multiple parks, resorts, and just about everything else in between.

We open the mailbag monthly and are ready to hear from you. Be sure to reach out with questions, stories, memories, and more. You never know if your letter will be read on a future episode: [email protected]

1. Our first letter is from Mike and he is curious about a particular stairway at Magic Kingdom. We need some experts out there to help Mike out with this stairway and what happened to it....

Buckle up because we are going back to Hollywood, well the way it was in your memories, but never was. Brian is leading us through the early years of food and drink at the Disney-MGM Studios. One of the last great theme parks on Disney property and one that always has fascinating stories coming to us about the opening days and how things were drastically different when compared to now.  We get to go through the different eateries that existed in the early years, including the Hollywood Brown Derby. How as very disappointed that it wasn't in the shape of a derby hat.

We are so glad so many of you could make it to our most recent event all about EPCOT Center and the 40 year anniversary. The videos from the event will be posted to our YouTube channel soon, but please take a minute to listen/watch our live recap we did a few weeks ago. Enjoy!

To make sure you are the first to know when items are released, subscribe to us on YouTube. Be sure to click the notification bell too, that way you are alerted when we post.  Finally, be sure to check out Vimeo if that is your thing, as we will post there as well.

• Join us next time for another amazing episode of the RetroWDW Podcast!

We take you back to an attraction and for our fans that wanted us to go way back, we are going way back. The Mickey Mouse Revue which opened October 1, 1971 last about nine years closing in the fall of 1980. How is leading us this month which only means one thing: we are going super deep into this topic. He begins by going over the homophone of Revue vs. Review and also how little is out there on the Mickey Mouse Revue. This attraction was located where the current Mickey’s PhilharMagic is playing each day, so you can get a feeling as to how this played and where it was in the 70s.

So our last episode, Episode 84: Disney Vacation Club, we dug into the history of the vacation club and the original resort. Throughout this episode, we were able to discuss our personal experiences with DVC and also our opinions. While going over all of the details in Episode 84, we asked for your feedback and your own opinions on DVC. You as the listeners did not disappoint! We had an amazing response and received tons of great messages.

Welcome to Episode 84 of the RetroWDW Podcast Episode 83.5 - Tammy Tuckey - We appreciate your support and hope you have been enjoying each and every episode. Be sure to check out some of our previous shows from over the years. We have visited multiple parks, resorts, and just about everything else in between.

For episode 83.5, we have a special guest joining us and we are so excited. Tammy Tuckey who has joined us in the past for numerous events and happenings is on the show to discuss her new album, Glowing in Timeless Places. If you need a refresher, Tammy joined us during RetroMagic with Ali Olmo back in 2019. They entertained us all with a great duet of Two Brothers, which is from The American Adventure. Be sure to enjoy this amazing performance after the episode ends. Tammy was able to join us once again, but this time at RetroMagic 50. How ran a great panel with George Wilkins and Tammy, which was absolutely perfect. Tammy was able to sing classic Disney World songs while George gave tons of backstories and information. Again, be sure to take this one in after the show. Before we get into Tammy's new album, she released 'You'll Find Me on Main Street' back in 2018. Another amazing album filled with great Disney songs, all sung by our talented guest.

For our main topic, we take you back to the late 80s and early 90s and get into the history of the Disney Vacation Club. We all know what the vacation club is nowadays, but how did it start, and why? In this era of Walt Disney World, things were much different, and the concept of a timeshare at Disney World seemed impossible. Disney decided to change this and tackled the concept of taking ownership in their properties. The Disney Vacation Club Resort was the original, changing names to Old Key West as it is called now. To kick this one off, we get into some personal stories about timeshares, how people get picked to purchase, some of the trickery that has occurred over the years, and more.

In this episode, we go back to the mid-1980s when Michael Eisner decided to bring The Chautauqua Institution’s blend of enrichment, entertainment, and fun back to Florida with a “uniquely Disney” touch. Originally conceived to be part of Celebration, The Disney Institute opened in February of 1996, offering “Discovery Vacations” where guests could choose from a variety of classes on the topics of Culinary Arts, Design Arts, Entertainment Arts, Environment, Lifestyles, Story Arts, and Sport and Fitness.