Latest / Privycast / Ep. 47 Disney Dumparoo: Magic Kingdom Bathrooms, The Brown Path, and Reedy Creek

Transcript

Ep. 47 Disney Dumparoo: Magic Kingdom Bathrooms, The Brown Path, and Reedy Creek · Privycast

0:01
Disney said, nay verily, we're going to plant ourselves deep into our swamp, my Shrekish friend.
0:16
Privy is a podcast about bathrooms.
0:22
Recorded here in my home bathroom.
0:24
We're home.
0:26
We made it back.
0:27
The last episode that you guys heard and the the first from 2022.
0:36
Happy New Year, everyone.
0:39
Yeah, I don't know if you all have come up with any resolutions.
0:43
Ours are, you know,
0:45
We've kind of made some attempts as a family to just kind of, yeah, eat better, you know, all those things.
0:53
It's the new year, and so if you're getting into any resolutions, I hope that they are going well.
1:00
I hope you're able to stick to them.
1:03
And I never really shared this, but last year, uh Privy and the endeavors that I sought to accomplish with the podcast last year,
1:14
I set a goal to record 36 new episodes in the year 2021 and I did it.
1:24
And I learned a lot.
1:27
And so I hope to carry those things over into 2022, which is where we are now.
1:33
And so I'm really looking for opportunities to, yeah, dig in more, really, really plunge the depths, you know, really.
1:43
just get the elastic force cup just tube deep and just sucking all of the bathroom knowledge that we can possibly get uh out of what we have for the show.
2:01
So a little bathroom checkup.
2:04
When the last episode came out, had some folks ask, like, did I really record?
2:10
in an airplane bathroom and I did.
2:12
It was very brief.
2:14
I promise I was respectful.
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But yeah, I definitely did record.
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And what I learned is airplanes are very loud.
2:24
They're loud things.
2:25
And so even in the bathroom where it's kind of that like quieter stalled area, it was louder in there.
2:34
So I apologize for the poor audio quality on those.
2:41
And I recently got back from vacation and as I've shared, know, we went to the most magical place on earth, Mickey's Merry Magical Kingdom of Capitalism.
2:51
And here's what you gotta know.
2:53
You know, we went to the swampy forbidden South, uh Florida, and they have figured it out.
2:59
Like if there is a way for the state of Florida to make money off of it, they're making money off of it.
3:06
And as one of my students at
3:09
the high school I work at said so well, it's America's glory hole.
3:14
And we're just gonna move right straight on.
3:15
Florida has made its money off of us.
3:19
But Disney was fun.
3:21
We went to Disney, we took the kids to Disney, had a lot of firsts.
3:25
And I'm gonna save the highlight of it for a Hunter's Anecdotes here in a little bit.
3:33
But my daughter got to see some princesses.
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She was stoked.
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And although in the times of COVID, you you see them from behind a rope and you're being as safe as you can be.
3:46
like, yeah, like the little like little kids don't understand like to pose for a picture if they're not standing directly next to the person that they're posing in the picture
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with.
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And so that was a little fun to like orchestrate that.
4:03
But it was good.
4:06
And and one of the things and you know,
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Like, you know I went to Disney.
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And one of the things that I did while at Disney was I left Mickey Mouse a bit of a surprise a couple of times.
4:21
And as I used the facilities in the happiest place on earth, and that's what we're going to talk about today.
4:28
Like, we're talking about Disney's bathrooms.
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And we're going to, there's a lot, we got a lot of ground to cover.
4:37
we're talking about Disney's bathrooms.
4:42
And as I use the facilities at the happiest place on Earth, I got an idea, because we made two trips to the Magic Kingdom.
4:51
And day one, I'm putzing around the Magic Kingdom.
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I'm in full Disney form, I'm ready.
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ah Let's ride these rides, let's visit these characters.
5:03
But something hit me as I walked around the magical kingdom on day one.
5:07
I thought, man, there's a lot of bathroom.
5:10
Like there's a lot of people here.
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Like even in the times of COVID, there's plenty of people walking around.
5:16
so they've got to have some bathrooming space to.
5:22
to meet the needs of all these people.
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And I mean, nobody's eaten great.
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Like, they're eating a lot of fried and heavy food at Disney.
5:29
Like, they've got good food, but it's not like light.
5:33
You know, they're serving up some pretty traditional American wares.
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And, you know, those things cause a bathrooming situation that is usually moderately dense.
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And so, I got a stinky bathroom idea.
5:48
We need to talk about Disney World's bathrooms, the Magic Kingdom's bathrooms.
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And so this week on Privy, that's just what we're going to do.
5:55
We're talking about Mickey's magical bathrooms and the literal small scale government that had to be created in order to maintain and operate the infrastructure required to deal
6:07
with the Kingdom's leaving.
6:09
Like Mickey, and Minnie, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of difficult.
6:14
Like is the princess, I think it's Cinderella's castle.
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I don't know.
6:19
I don't know enough about it.
6:21
But like is the princess and the prince the ones whose kingdom it is or is it Mickey's kingdom?
6:27
Because like Mickey's definitely the star of the show but like the princess's castle is there.
6:34
Yeah that's the only thing that I've always been like questioning on.
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But I like to think of it as Mickey's kingdom.
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Princess is figured out.
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uh And so while I was touring Mickey's kingdom on my second day
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in the magical land.
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entered all of the major attraction bathrooms.
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because we need to review them.
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We gotta be able to talk about these bathrooms, y'all.
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I mean, if there's this many people putzing around in this Florida heat, getting sweaty downstairs, really just filling up on all the goodies, we gotta talk about these
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bathrooms, because these bathrooms are gonna be seeing some things.
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And so I entered, me and my deaf, entered all of the major attraction bathrooms and I have determined and I was determined to figure out which one is the best or at least which one
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was the best that day.
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We're gonna talk about that.
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uh Because I will say, and I gotta admit, I did not go into every bathroom and the reason I did not is because some of these bathrooms
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are inside food establishments.
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Now I did visit a couple of those um and those are not under like watch here, but I entered all main attraction bathrooms and we're just going to talk about it.
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Like I did not want to put restaurants that are already crammed for space in the Magic Kingdom out by going in and harassing the bathroom space as well.
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So maybe one day we'll return for a restroom.
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restaurant restroom chat But I wanted to honor their customer policy in a situation that already has bathroom space shortage That's what I say and I promise I didn't take that
8:29
long to do my business and the things that I needed to do in the bathroom when I went in I'm not taking up a lot of real estate.
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I was in and out quick But as you'll hear my business was different than many of the other my fellow kingdom traveling bathroom goers
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And I also want to note, like, there have been other folks who have evaluated the bathrooms of the Magic Kingdom.
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And they've made all the top 10 lists of the Magic Kingdom bathrooms.
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And that's great.
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And go read those.
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Like, if you want to know which has the most, like, feng shui bathroom in the Magic Kingdom, go look it up.
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Like, that's good.
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It's out there.
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ah Somebody has come up with that list and told you.
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Listen, if you want to hang brown in the Magic Kingdom, is the spot where it's just going to be so cool to look at the stuff on the walls while you do it.
9:28
I think they're really, if they're being honest, these people are not evaluating the bathrooms, the toilets.
9:34
They're evaluating the aesthetic.
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They're evaluating the like, oh, like how much does this tie in with the theme?
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Like does the carpet match the drapes in this part of the kingdom when it comes to the bathroom?
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That's what a lot of these folks are evaluating.
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And I gotta tell you, like, ooh, does the feng shui, that's not...
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What we're doing here at Privy.
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At Privy we're taking the review and our phone recording equipment into the bathroom to evaluate what is each area's bathroom like on the inside.
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Like how much human yellow, brown and who is that red?
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Is there at Pirates of the Caribbean?
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How clean does Gaston keep his turd catchers?
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The important questions.
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I will note I stopped by 12 of the 16 restrooms in the Magic Kingdom, those other 4 being restaurant establishment uh restrooms.
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And I want to note ah I got stuff for 11.
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I have lost the recording of one of the bathrooms and um so here are the privy diary is.
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You see it's like diary but
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with diarrhea, the privy diarrhea.
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It's a stretch.
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I also want to note these comments, any comments that are coming forth in any of these uh sound bites that you are going to hear, they are in no way reflection of the working staff
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at the Magic Kingdom.
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These crew members, know, they're wearing hot garb.
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all day in the sun putting up with folks just...
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No.
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This is not an evaluation of that.
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If anything, this will serve as a commentary for the bathroom traveler of probably pretty much any amusement park, but at least the Magic Kingdom.
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Like, this is going to be more of a snapshot of, hey, you there, guy getting ready to go in the stall.
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Are you going to think about it?
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Like,
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Have you thought about how you're gonna interact with that space?
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Because I have seen the after effects of every main attraction bathroom in the Magic Kingdom in one day.
12:04
And as we're gonna hear, people haven't thought of
12:11
First up uh on our Magic Kingdom bathroom travel ah is right inside the park.
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It is the Main Street bathrooms.
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So this privy check-in is coming from the Main Street City Hall Disney World Magic Kingdom bathroom.
12:34
The park's been open an hour and four minutes and ah
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Four of the eight toilets were full of human waste.
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Really great to the top.
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Some dude had too much corn.
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And there was pee on three of the other four seats.
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So I'm currently seated in the only stall that didn't just have human filth, just scuttled about.
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So stay tuned.
13:02
This is bathroom number one of the Magic Kingdom.
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I still cannot believe that there was a clogged situation that existed in the Main Street bathroom an hour into the parks being open.
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man, wow.
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And from there, you know, we rode and then, you know, we rode Pirates of the Caribbean.
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And then once we get off Pirates of the Caribbean, I put ham to Jack Sparrow's bathrooms.
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Alright, just rode Pirates of the Caribbean, got off.
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We are currently sully deep into Jack Sparrow's bathroom back here.
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um Ironically, the Pirates bathrooms are cleaner than Mickey's Main Streets right now.
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And uh really cool like entryway.
13:56
ah Keeping with the theme right off the edge of the the gift shop, which was great.
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yeah, out of my check, there was nine bathrooms.
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and about half were being taken and the others were all clean.
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So good on Jack Sparrow, toilet paper's full.
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Killing it at the Magic Kingdom.
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Jack Sparrow's pirate bathrooms.
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Really good stuff.
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Right around the corner from Pirates of the Caribbean and not in Liberty Square.
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We're gonna talk about that in just a moment.
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ah Is this weird little tunnel passing through Adventureland and it's called the Adventureland Breezeway.
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I stepped into the Adventureland Breezeway next and here is what that was like.
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Alright, so we are in the uh Adventureland Breezeway.
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This one's kind of cool.
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It's kind of got like a walk-in tunnel entrance that opens through to a tunnel that goes between Frontierland and Adventureland.
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uh Coming in, it's got the same kind of arts game.
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um
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Good pile work.
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There was, I believe, 10 bathrooms.
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A couple were full of pee, a couple full of poop.
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Most of them were taken.
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And enough urinals to supply a small army.
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So the Adventureland Breezeway, not too terrible.
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Great place to just kind of swing by and cool off in that little entryway.
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So it gets two Mickey thumbs ups in that.
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From here, I went about my day.
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and did a whole bunch of bathroom stops in one fell swoop.
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I got to this point and I'm gonna mention this a second, but I was like, man, I need to get going.
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And so my first stop, as I back traced a little bit in the kingdom, were the enchanted forest bathrooms in the very far back.
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Alright, so now we are in the Enchanted Forest bathrooms at the very back of the park.
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And these are kind of located within the Beauty and the Beast section.
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And this is as far back in the Magic Kingdom as you can go.
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So I counted five bathroom stalls, five urinals, um and uh yeah, the only one open was Filthy.
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And so I think the real magic and the real enchantment
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of the enchanted forest.
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it's got the aesthetic down.
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But man, there was some randy stuff going on in this bathroom.
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It looked like Beast had fully just ravaged this toilet before I came in here.
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And so, yeah, that witch's magic spell is still doing a number on his downstairs.
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You know what I'm saying?
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Wow.
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What a disaster.
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Just on the other side of Pinocchio's restaurant is the tangled theme small
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small world bathrooms.
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Now these are some of the newer bathrooms uh in the park.
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I didn't know that going in and so I think that will be reflected in in my interaction with these restrooms.
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All right so not too far over from uh Pinocchio's magical little village is it's a small world and
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Here's what I'm going say so far.
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It's got the most bathrooms uh per bathroom that I've seen.
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I counted 12 dump installs and 15 spray centers.
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so it's looking pretty strong there.
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Most of them were available.
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And I would say of the ones that were available, I would say at least half were clean or clean enough that you wouldn't need to do too much wiping to put your butt on it.
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Yeah, it's a small world, it's a strong pick for bathrooms in the Magic Kingdom.
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It's going to be a good one.
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popping out of the tangled small world bathrooms, I hoofed it onto a boat to go visit the facilities on Tom Sawyer's Island.
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Because fun fact, if you're visiting the Magic Kingdom, here's a fun fact, the boats to and from the island quit running at 4.30.
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So I had to move quick because at this point I'm running out of time.
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And so I hoof it to Tom Sawyer Island and then promptly to the back of Tom Sawyer Island.
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and then run to the front.
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All right, so we are a full boat ride, a small hike, fully removed to the back of the Magic Kingdom.
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We are in Fort Longhorn on Tom Sawyer's Island.
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This joker's way back in here.
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But it is a single-stall bathroom in the Magic Kingdom.
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That said, there is literally diarrhea spray on the metal backsplash of the Sloan automatic flusher.
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So Fort Longhorn, they got to work on their aim down here at the fort.
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I actually had to wait to come in and put my butt on this seat.
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yeah, this one's a bit out of the way and not exactly worth it.
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But the fort's cool.
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And so if you're on Tom's Zero Island, you got to go.
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It's a single stall.
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Better believe it.
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All right.
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So just a short little jump back toward the front from Fort Longhorn is just the general docking bay.
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Tom Sawyer Island bathroom and I'm out of breath because I'm getting ready to miss my boat.
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There's two stalls.
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One is a extended access.
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Both are dirty.
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Not a lot of urinal space and it's just a very generic Tom Sawyer Island.
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For the two toughest bathrooms to probably get to on the island, not a lot to see.
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hopefully future lands got some better things to offer.
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Once I escaped uh Tom Sawyer's Island, I went
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I went right around the corner to Splash Mountain to use the Splash uh Mountain changing room bathroom type spots down there.
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And you're going to hear it was wild.
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All right, y'all, this is a special one.
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So this is the bathrooms at the splashdown photos at the end of Splash Mountain.
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This is my favorite ride.
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And as I'm looking at it, you know, about eight urinals, about five toilets.
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And it would seem that the logs that are flying down Splash Mountain, not the only logs in this situation here, there is urine everywhere.
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I'm standing in it.
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so the splash at the end of Splash Mountain is not the only splash in the area, seemingly.
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People could not manage their shot.
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So I love Splash Mountain, but the bathroom for it, not the best here.
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uh Yeah, I may have to post a picture of this splash mountain bathroom.
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Pictures were taken of all these.
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But I made it back to the opposite side of the park next and stopped off for a ride with the family.
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All right, so just got done uh riding the barnstormer.
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It was pretty fun.
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It was my daughter's first roller coaster.
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She was terrified and then instantly said, let's do it again.
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And then I went to the uh Fantasyland Railway bathroom.
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And I gotta say, this was the cleanest bathroom I've been to today.
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There was six urinals and six dumperoonies.
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And they were all clean, and most of them were open.
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So it's pretty far back there, and you gotta go through the kids zone.
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And it's right next to the splash pad.
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But if you're looking for a good bathroom, uh for my money so far, ah it's the railway or a small world for me.
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clean, totally okay to push cheek against it.
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You know that was a good bathroom.
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We, you know, from here we headed back up toward, it's getting late, you know, it's about 8 ish pm pushing 9.
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We head back up to the front of the park.
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We watch the fireworks as the people are screaming at you that you can't stand in certain spots.
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It's great.
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um And so I'm looking at my map and I'm like dang, I still got bathrooms to hit before we leave.
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So I tore off
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uh and leaving uh my family to gather their wares and figure out what they're gonna buy from the shops.
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I tore off towards uh future land, tomorrow land, next year land.
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All right, we are almost at the end of the day here.
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ah
22:36
we made it over to the Tomorrowlands Rocket Tower Plaza bathrooms.
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ah These jokers are out of the way unless you're in line for Space Mountain.
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Not really worth it.
22:45
um There's gotta be something closer.
22:48
yeah, there is urinals like woofie, you wouldn't believe how many urinals there are.
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There's toilets, galore, uh and yeah, most of them were full when I came in.
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yeah, if you're looking for a place to uh
23:05
Yeah, hoop, RRP, while you wait for Space Mountain, this is going to be it.
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The toilet check, a little wet.
23:13
um Everything's kind of just been a little wet today.
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So if we've learned anything in amusement parks, everything's just a little wet, including the toilet seats.
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And with that, we left.
23:26
After this, we left.
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Kids are tired.
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I'm tired.
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I would have glad handed Mickey, but COVID wouldn't let me, so.
23:34
We leave, but before we leave the magical world of Disney, I had to use the bathroom outside the gate.
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Well, y'all, it's been fun.
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feet are pissed.
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And we're hitting up the last bathroom, which is actually the first bathroom.
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The main entrance on the way into the Magic Kingdom.
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It's actually outside the gate.
24:00
And it smells very clean in here.
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It's very well lit.
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Not a lot of stalls, but that's because it's not inside.
24:06
And things appear to be pretty clean.
24:08
So all in all,
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Mickey's magical kingdom is keeping it pretty clean and yeah, it's gonna be great.
24:18
Don't forget to flash.
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Wow, what a freak.
24:25
Going into the toilet stall 12 different times, pulling out his phone, putting ham to porcelain and pressing record.
24:38
And one of those stops brings us to a special, not special, but like very, very wild hunter's anecdotes to keep you afloat.
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So as I said, this trip to Disney was full of a lot of firsts for our family.
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And my absolute favorite ride, as I shared in the recording, is Splash Mountain.
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It's the best.
25:16
It's got a dark spot.
25:17
It's got a drop.
25:18
You know, it's got good music.
25:20
It's a long ride, like it's worth the wait.
25:24
It's just a good ride.
25:26
And you know, and I have hyped up Splash Mountain to my son and he was big enough to ride it.
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And so we took our first Splash Mountain adventure together.
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He ah was a little not sure about it the first time.
25:40
But then by the time we get back for round two, he is all in.
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um And so on the last night, it's our last like my son has made the special request.
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Dad, we got to ride Splash Mountain at night.
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And I'm like, you know what?
25:56
You're dang right we do.
25:57
And so my wife and I take our cousin and our son over to Splash Mountain because we're going to ride this joker at night.
26:08
And so we're in line and we're waiting in line.
26:10
And sure enough, know, my son, I got to go to the bathroom.
26:14
you know, thank goodness it's not just he and I in line.
26:16
Otherwise, it's like, what do you do?
26:17
Do you just get out and then like reset?
26:20
But thankfully, my wife was able to stay in line.
26:24
And we hop over to the Splash Mountain splashdown bathrooms and man, we found the most randy nasty toilet.
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And you know, you go in and little kids like they're still figuring out how to interact with public toilets uh in a positive way that sets them up for success.
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And I'm just like, buddy, just don't let your pants touch the floor.
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and just don't get too close because there is wet everywhere.
26:59
Like everything is wet.
27:01
The floor is wet.
27:03
The toilet is wet.
27:04
My shoes were wet.
27:06
And it's like just it was like how many people had visited this stall and just let fly and had no regard for wiping anything up.
27:19
And so, you know, naturally I do what every person that has
27:24
and over fascination with bathrooms would do.
27:27
I take a bunch of pictures and send a bunch of texts regarding that toilet and it's real.
27:33
Like how can you know that Splash Mountain of all bathrooms, know, this best ride of the day thing is going to be the worst bathroom.
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Like it's so sad.
27:48
I'll post a picture but like there's gonna be a warning page on that for the
27:53
for the faint of heart and tummy.
27:54
That toilet was filthy.
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My buddy's response, my son is like, dad, it's gross.
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And I'm like, yes, positively gross, And my buddy, sent him a text and he's just like, we're trying to figure out what it is on the seat.
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And it's like, dude, is foul in here.
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And then people are not washing their hands.
28:19
Yeah.
28:22
It was something else.
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But you know what?
28:24
The best part?
28:26
I to ride Splash Mountain with my kid.
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And the coolest thing is, as you come to the top of Splash Mountain at night, the castle's all lit up.
28:35
You got a perfect view of the castle.
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And so dirty bathrooms and all?
28:41
It was a good trip to Splash Mountain, nonetheless.
28:46
Hunter's Anecdotes to keep you afloat.
28:53
All in all, I gotta say, the bathrooms at Disney were not the cleanest.
28:58
Now, I will say we also went to SeaWorld and Legoland, and neither of their parks had very clean bathrooms either.
29:05
And again, this is not to disparage workers.
29:08
This is a comment on American consumers.
29:12
Chill it out.
29:13
Like, just figure it out.
29:16
You know what I mean?
29:17
Like, aim it and quit, quit just slinging ham everywhere.
29:23
It goes in the toilet and if it doesn't make it, wipe it up, dude.
29:28
Holy crap.
29:31
The toilets had a fair share of misfires, that's for sure.
29:35
And like you've, like you heard, mean, first toilet, I, I got to revisit this first toilet into the park right as I get there.
29:43
Thing had only been open for an hour and I walk into the men's room, go to the first unlock thing, just resting turds in the toilet.
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I'm like, man, that, that sucks.
29:55
Somebody really forgot like.
29:58
the whole how we end every day.
30:00
Obviously I haven't heard privy.
30:02
I go to the next one.
30:03
Whammo take two.
30:05
I'm 0 for 2 full full of turds.
30:08
I go to the one across.
30:10
I'm like, well, maybe it's these two.
30:11
So I go from the one across.
30:13
Dude is slam full.
30:14
And I'm like, this is impossible.
30:15
We have three out of three toilets filled with feces.
30:19
All the other toilets have people in them.
30:21
I finally go to the stall on the end and she's clear.
30:25
Like we're clean and the seat ain't even that bad.
30:27
Like, you know, I put beef down and.
30:34
I hit flush after making my deposit and it did not go down.
30:39
No plunger.
30:40
And so I'm sitting here going, they have a category like five emergency.
30:46
If this is an hour in and they don't have this dealt with, we could have a serious problem.
30:52
And so I go out and I did find a cast member before rejoining my family.
30:56
And you know what?
30:58
Here's the thing.
30:59
It's always fun to have to take the heat for like,
31:03
a of people's situation.
31:06
So I walk up to this lady that's near the bathrooms and I'm like, hey, the bathrooms in the men's room are clogged.
31:14
And what I'm sure she heard is, hey, sorry, I clogged Mickey's Main Street toilet so bad that four of the 10 toilets have standing human waste in it.
31:24
Now, I know I didn't do that.
31:26
Like I contributed a small bit, but they were clogged when I got in there.
31:30
and I absolutely would have plunged it if there had been a plunger.
31:36
But like, this lady thinks that I did this.
31:42
Because I'm the one that went and talked to her.
31:43
She's going, that guy has done a foul deed to Mickey's bathroom.
31:52
And you know what?
31:52
I'm okay with that.
31:55
But I do know the soil got unclogged because I went back to check at the end of the day.
31:59
oh But the question here is now we've evaluated some bathrooms.
32:06
Best bathroom in the park I think is either Small World or the Fantasyland Railroad in the back of the park there.
32:15
Those two are both strong bathrooms.
32:17
Very good bathrooms.
32:19
But once it gets flushed
32:22
The other thing we need to talk about is like, where does it go?
32:27
Disney's a big place.
32:29
Like, the Magic Kingdom is just but one park.
32:34
Like, where does it go?
32:36
And of course, the short answer is the sewer.
32:39
But on privy, like, we don't care about the short answer.
32:44
When have we ever cared about the short answer?
32:48
I talk to you about a chocolate maker just to get to like,
32:51
the point of a plunger at one point.
32:53
So like, we're past the point of looking for the short answer, and also it would be a moderately short episode if we did that.
33:02
Now, to answer the question, we need to make a couple stops through history.
33:07
And one is brought to us by the feature of Liberty Square.
33:12
If you've been to Disney, and I think this is also in Disneyland, but I might be wrong.
33:17
or if you are what they call a Diz nerd and know too much about the parks, you might already know what I'm getting ready to say, and that's okay.
33:25
And if you are, the info I'm gonna tell you, like I said, but the privy listener might not have a terrible amount of overlap with Disney.
33:34
And that's okay, it's a shame, but it's okay.
33:37
Liberty Square, the part of Disney's Magic Kingdom, is uh a part of the park that pays
33:45
homage to a bunch of different moments in American history, particularly colonial America.
33:52
And one of those moments was the fact that prior to the time of indoor plumbing and below ground sewers, they had to be creative.
34:02
And by creative, I mean, uh, they did it differently.
34:08
If you've ever been in Liberty Square and you are a bathroom frequenter or an enthusiast, you will notice
34:16
They don't have a bathroom.
34:18
Like, now there isn't one far off.
34:21
It's the Magic Kingdom.
34:21
You don't have to go too far.
34:23
But like, there's not like a main attraction bathroom in the Liberty Square.
34:29
And there's just like, there's one in the fish shop, but that doesn't count because like that's the fish shop.
34:35
But they did this to keep with the colonial feel.
34:40
There were not very many toilets and the ones that were there
34:44
Empty just into a pit in the ground.
34:46
Privy pits.
34:47
We talked about those on the patriotic privy pits episode.
34:51
That's right.
34:53
Early America didn't have indoor plumbing and pretty much no buildings had toilets unless they were ones that served as as a privy pit dug in a common space.
35:08
And so we must ask them like what did people do?
35:13
And to answer that question, I would normally have you direct your attention to the pathway through Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom.
35:21
But since this is an audio medium, a podcast, I'll share one of my very favorite bathroom facts and descriptions about Disney.
35:29
In Liberty Square, besides not having toilets at the attractions, there is a brown swath of sidewalks.
35:40
and this brown path that is, according to Disney, intentionally put there to remember how the streets of colonial America used to run with the leaving of early colonials as they
35:57
would empty their privy pots, their chamber pots, and some do their deed directly into the streets.
36:04
This would then be washed down the street with a bucket of water and
36:10
and the streets would run with brown.
36:14
Disney's brown path is supposed to remind park goers of the days when the streets ran with skeet.
36:22
It's subtle, but it's definitely there.
36:25
I tread the path.
36:27
And at the time I was like, what in the?
36:30
I had to like look it up.
36:32
It's real.
36:33
And according to some, and I believe Disney, it's because America once had
36:40
dookie in the streets and in some places it still does.
36:45
But thankfully ah Disney chose to just make the sidewalk to pay this homage and and they put some plumbing in thank God which brings us to another of my favorite facts about
36:58
Disney's Magic Kingdom and the Disney world as a whole.
37:04
And to talk about that we got to talk about Reedy Creek.
37:09
The Reedy Creek Improvement District is the result of the Walt Disney Company's dream to build a recreational-oriented development on a huge piece of land in central Florida.
37:22
We know that as Disney World.
37:24
But before Disney's plans and Reedy Creek's invention, the tract of land that they're looking at is just like it's remote farmland in swamp and lowland.
37:37
There's nothing there.
37:39
It's swamp.
37:40
I talked to my dad.
37:41
was like, dad, have you ever heard of Reedy Creek?
37:44
And he told me, he's like, yeah, I think so.
37:46
And I was talking to him, I was like, when you were growing up as a kid, do you remember like when Disney moved in?
37:53
And he was telling me, he's like, yeah, where they're at.
37:55
It was just swamp.
37:56
Like there's nothing out there.
37:58
And that's because at the time, the nearest power, like the nearest electricity service was more than 10 miles away.
38:08
The property itself lies in two different counties and it was vacant.
38:15
And in the mid 1960s, Disney, over there in California, they looked at Florida and said, yes, this swamp will do.
38:26
And while the residents of Florida, like Shrek, may have often been shouting for them to get out of their swamp, Disney said, naverily, we're going to plant ourselves deep into
38:37
our swamp.
38:38
my shrekish friend.
38:40
Now, Disney and, I mean myself, because I was there, celebrated their 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World.
38:49
um But we've got to ask, like, how did Disney go from nothing, no power, no roads, nothing?
38:57
There's not even sewer lines.
39:00
No infrastructure in sight to the literal Disney World in such a short amount of time.
39:05
And again, the answer is Reedy Creek.
39:08
Because when Disney approached the state of Florida and the government about their plans, Florida kind of went like...
39:17
Mm-hmm.
39:18
And so they worked with Disney.
39:19
They're like, we don't know how you're going to do this But but man, we want it like obviously we want this here.
39:28
It's gonna it's gonna drive tourism like woofie.
39:31
You wouldn't believe it
39:34
And so they worked with the Disney Company.
39:36
The Florida government worked with the Disney Company to invent a special tax and improvement district that has the same authority and responsibility of a county
39:49
government.
39:49
Thus, the Reedy Creek Improvement District, now 55 years old, was how Disney was able to move forward.
39:59
In it,
40:00
those inside the Reedy Creek district, those who would live and reside inside the Reedy Creek area, would be responsible for paying the taxes of the district.
40:10
So even if you live in either of the two counties that Reedy Creek encompasses, if you aren't inside Reedy Creek, you don't pay the Reedy Creek tax.
40:19
This goes for businesses as well.
40:21
So the Walt Disney Company is going to one day with all of their properties be paying some hefty tax.
40:28
And while we're at Disney,
40:30
We're doing back, they were doing back lot work on the roads.
40:35
Siri just totally roached us Royal and took us on a back road to the Magic Kingdom.
40:40
And it's Reedy Creek that does that work or that at least hires it done.
40:46
Nowadays, Reedy Creek maintains 134 miles of road, 67 miles of waterway.
40:54
250,000 people visit Reedy Creek District every day.
40:59
They deal with 30 tons of aluminum paper, steel cans and cardboard and plastic and there's mixed reports, some say this is a year, some say this is a day, I would argue it doesn't
41:10
matter, that's a lot of crap.
41:13
And most importantly, they manage 60,000 tons of waste water, often actually filled with crap.
41:20
And so when I hit flush, once it gets through Disney's piping,
41:28
Reedy Creek is on the hook for my turrets.
41:31
When you hit the flusher, the first thing your turrets are gonna do is they're gonna go past the lair.
41:36
And this lair is known to the employees of Disney as the Utilidors.
41:42
Now, I wanna tell you that to my knowledge, now I haven't been in there, because I'm not an employee, but I don't think it flows through it.
41:49
I'm sure there is sewage that is, it's piping.
41:52
It doesn't just run raw through there.
41:55
But this is a network, these utilidors are a network of interconnected tunnels that run below most of the Disney parks to make sure that cast members who are from one area of the
42:07
park don't be seen ruining the feng shui and the theme of another area by God forbid walking to get lunch in that section.
42:16
So Disney made a series of tunnels to run into the park itself to help their own employees
42:22
travel in between and thus avoid making this whole terrible mistake.
42:29
But the way this comes into play the sewage that these tunnels.
42:33
So what you got to know is these tunnels, this utility door tunnels are actually built on street level.
42:38
And so when you are walking around the Disney World Magic Kingdom Park, you're actually on the second story.
42:45
You're like there is an entire tunnel system that is on ground level below you.
42:51
And the reason that the utilidors have to be on ground level and not below level is because Florida has a high water table.
42:59
And if they were to put the utilidors down there, they'd be flooding, they'd be collapsing, it'd be very dangerous.
43:04
And so there's a slight gradual incline as you walk up to the magical kingdom, magic kingdom.
43:10
And that is because they are slowly introducing this grade of elevation to
43:19
Make it not seem like you are one story up, when in fact there's an entire layer underneath you that is actually on ground level.
43:27
When Reedy Creek, they had to overcome this high water table, because Florida is the swampy, forbidden south, which is not a euphemism for me when I've had Taco Bell.
43:39
It's a swamp.
43:40
And it's not something you want when you're making a tunnel system in sewage that would run under an amusement park.
43:48
you don't want that to go reverse out.
43:50
And so it travels through the sewage, past the utilidor level of the Magic Kingdom, into the sewer system maintained by Reedy Creek.
43:59
Now, first, the water, the waste within it, is washed into the building sewers connected to the park, resorts wider system, passes through larger branch sewers, it's like sewer
44:12
pipes all the way down.
44:13
It's Mario's fever dream.
44:16
And then eventually this empties out into underground pits in which the sewage and all of the restaurant runoff and all this foul filth collects.
44:27
And then when the sewage rises to a predetermined level, the pump forces it upwards into a pressurized system from where it eventually reaches the largest, like biggest in diameter
44:40
sewer lines.
44:41
And it
44:43
is this new system, the Gravity Interceptors, that then push it to the Reedy Creek Improvement District wastewater treatment plant.
44:53
This treatment plant has a capacity of 15 million gallons per day.
44:58
It's lot of gallons.
44:59
It's located just north of Disney's Animal Kingdom, and it's part of a cluster of facilities that includes the Materials Recovery Facility.
45:08
The sewage passes through three stages here.
45:11
um
45:12
The first stage involves like it going through these large tanks and allowing it to just kind of settle and the sludge is like allowed to settle and it enables a grease and oils
45:23
able to skim.
45:25
So they just take it essentially like a glorified pool net and they skim off like the solid hunky bunkies.
45:33
And yeah, that's got to be a bad job.
45:37
I can't imagine being the turd skimmer dude is going to be like
45:42
I bet it pays pretty good, but I bet it's not highly desired.
45:47
The second stage here degrades the biological content of the sewage.
45:53
That's biological content is code word for human waste.
46:01
And other things that have been flushed down the toilets and washed down sinks.
46:05
And the idea of my freshly laid buddies chilling in this tank and then eventually being skimmed off the top is maybe the least magical thing you could hear about the Magic King.
46:16
The water from here is, once it's treated, according to the state of Florida and the federal government after it has passed through the treatment process, is quote, above
46:27
standards for safe drinking.
46:28
Now if you hear that and you think, oh my gosh, is he getting ready to say no, Mickey has not pulled a dirty trick to get you to buy more bottles of water.
46:38
And I'll say this, the water from the fountains at Disney don't need any help being foul.
46:44
It smells like.
46:45
Nasty butt swamp like you just get your mouth you feel like you opened your mouth inside of like some warm lake every time you fill your bottle So like they don't need to pump
46:57
This like redone water into the thing to make you buy bottles of water their waters bad enough smelling already is so that there you go But that treated water that apparently is
47:07
safe enough to drink not me
47:10
is used to water the hundreds of thousands of plants, trees, shrubs, and turf that are enjoyed by us tourists.
47:18
In fact, Disney has its own tree farm wherein they grow their special foliage um and they're actually able to like trim and cut them and prune them perfectly on this farm and
47:29
then transplant them into the park.
47:31
They use the recycled doo doo water to water these plants.
47:38
The streets are hosed down with the excess water, as well as cleaning their fleet of transport vehicles.
47:46
The water that is not used at this point is sent to a 1,000 acre site containing a filtration basin that then allows the water to return to the water table.
47:58
Gotta keep it high.
48:00
And if you're hearing all this so far and you're going, now wait a minute, I've been hearing a lot about water and liquids.
48:10
But like, if you're like me, you saw a lot more than just liquid when you visited Mickey's Magical Kingdom.
48:17
You might have made a lot more too.
48:19
I'll tell you what, somebody was making perennia solids because I ran in and saw visually and smelled nasally way more of them than I needed to.
48:30
But, isn't that part of the magic?
48:33
Maybe not.
48:35
After skimming off the floaty bits,
48:40
We're left with a large pile of, well, what used to get washed down the streets in colonial America is now waiting for its next steps.
48:49
Near to the wastewater treatment center, the Central Florida Energy Garden from Harvest Power was added and planted in 2013.
48:58
This energy garden is priced at $30 million and they use the pretty intricate system to convert it into usable product.
49:08
Step one.
49:09
Run it through a glorified filtration and remove the plastics.
49:21
But once on the other side and that stuff has been removed, you just add water and you mix it to create what they call the slurry, which man, yeah, slinging slurry.
49:34
I'll tell you what, sometimes you just got to sling slurry.
49:37
Sling slurry is good code word for taking poop.
49:41
This slurry is mixed with the bio solids, which again, way for brown rounds from downtown.
49:49
It is sent to an anaerobic digester.
49:51
Now, this is a fancy machine.
49:54
And what this machine does is it mixes it all together, adds some bacteria.
49:58
And eventually what happens is it's supposed to resemble what would happen inside of a cow's tum tum.
50:07
It's creating it and breaking it down and making it look more like actual fertilizer product because it's left to sit in a special tank for almost a month.
50:17
This
50:17
produces a gas called a biogas, which is used to convert electricity and it produces enough power to power 3,000 homes a year.
50:28
Now, it's not used for 3,000 homes because what they do use is they use it to power the garden and the treatment plant.
50:35
And so the garden and the treatment plant are technically completely off-grid carbon neutral.
50:41
Here we are.
50:42
What is left is spun in a centrifuge.
50:45
They just spin in
50:47
the residue turds.
50:50
Just, you got me going spin city on the teacups.
50:54
And just like I'm spinning on teacups, my brown is spinning on the centrifuge.
50:59
Just going round and round.
51:01
Go faster, go faster.
51:03
I think I'm...
51:06
It produces a cake or layer of just filthy solids that is then used for fertilizer for the plants of the resort.
51:13
And the water that goes back is sent to the treatment all over again.
51:17
In short, when you take a dump-a-roo at Disney, walk out and admire the Mickey Mouse car of foliage.
51:26
Cause that's where it goes.
51:28
And isn't that magical?
51:31
Hey Granny, look at that shrub.
51:35
I was fed by my deuce, Granny.
51:40
That's the real magic of Disney.
51:43
That and I visited and put beef to 12 different Mickey's toilets while I was there.
51:48
In one day!
51:50
I took shower that night.
51:54
things I've done since this podcast started, I'll tell you what.
51:58
Thank you guys so much for listening.
52:01
I'm very excited for this year and and excited for how last year went.
52:07
ah Spotify has officially added its rating system and the sooner that shows can be rated the better.
52:16
And so if you wouldn't mind in this new year ah leave the episodes a rating or review.
52:23
And that would be super helpful.
52:25
Gets the word out about the show.
52:26
Helps it for when people start to type things into the search.
52:29
It's like, wow, this, you know.
52:31
And it pops it up.
52:32
So maybe people click on it.
52:33
So iTunes and Spotify are both good places to leave ratings.
52:37
Five star option is preferred.
52:39
Send us an email.
52:40
privycast at gmail.com.
52:42
We'd love to hear from you.
52:43
Send us pictures, topic suggestions.
52:47
Say hi.
52:48
Say you're dumb.
52:50
Really just email whatever you feel like emailing.
52:54
I'm down for it.
52:54
We'll try to read some of those and read some of those reviews on the pod as they come in.
52:59
As always, ah we want to thank Kevin McLeod for the use of Barroom Ballet as our intro and outro music.
53:07
You can find Kevin's music at incompetech.com and his music is licensed under Creative Commons license Attribution 4.0.
53:16
Thanks, Kevin.
53:17
We'd also like to thank PODINGTON BEAR for the use of all the colors in the world.
53:22
You can find PODINGTON BEAR's music at PODINGTONBEAR.COM.
53:26
Thanks PODINGTON.
53:29
This has been another episode of Privy.
53:31
Thank you guys so much for joining us.
53:33
From my bathroom to yours.
53:36
And now, as always, and as forever, and man I wish some of those people at Disney would have remembered.
53:46
Don't forget to flush.