Memory 076 – Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular!

Come and join us for another installment of the WDW-Memories podcast, where I try to make it possible for you relive your Walt Disney World Memories when you can’t actually be there.

** Binaural Audio, Stereo Audio **
Time: 46:19

So about two weeks ago I went with some of our friends to Kings Island, an amusement park outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. Now I grew up going to the sister park, Kings Dominion in Virginia, so I was looking forward to comparing this park to that. Instead, Traci and I would find ourselves comparing it to Walt Disney World. Attractions were just simply attractions, without the build up or theming that you find a Disney park. Themed buildings were just very simply done, where stores and sponsors logos dominated the building taking away from any aesthetic. And shows, well let’s just say they looked like the people in them almost didn’t care.

That can definitely not be said about today’s memory. In this show, if you are checked out or don’t care, someone could be seriously hurt or worse. I’m of course talking about the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular! in Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It is a marvel of timing and precision. The music accompaniment is of course steller. And the lighting and effects easily transport you to a place where you swear you’re watching the movie unfold right before your eyes.

As usual, we received a request for this Memory via email from Mike. He wrote:

I first saw the Indiana Jones stunt show as a kid in the early 1990s. I remembered being very excited to see this show because I loved the Indiana Jones movies. Although my mom had to explain to me that wasn’t Harrison Ford getting chased by a mammoth ball. This made me upset because I really wanted his autograph to go into my autograph book! Nonetheless I still enjoyed watching Indiana avoiding the traps, fighting it out with the bad guys, and feeling the heat from the huge fireballs. On every trip back to Hollywood Studios (I still call it MGM haha) I always make sure that the show is one of the attractions I experience.

As usual I tossed it out to you the listener for any of your memories or thoughts of this show and got these responses.

On Facebook, Daniel wrote:

Being a huge fan of Indiana Jones, I couldn’t wait to see this show on our first trip and it didn’t let me down. The stunts and the special effects were great!! A must see at Hollywood Studios.

Great suggestion and story Mike, and you too Daniel. I too have a favorite memory I have to share. You see, I was picked one time to actually be in the show. Sadly I wasn’t thinking and took my recorder OFF and handed it to my family before going on stage. Now the mike would have been under my smock because I didn’t have my binaural microphones yet, but still would have been cool to share. For now, stay tuned after the memory, and I’ll recount what I can remember from being in the show.

Now, today’s memory is going to have to be spliced together from two trips in 2006. Most of this final audio will be from our Anniversary trip in 2006, but I’m having to splice in a solo trip from a trip in 2000, because the audio from our anniversary trip is partially corrupted from my hard drive crash I talk about in Memory 18a. So I’ll be splicing in the first scene from the March 2006 trip, but unfortunately this audio is just in stereo. So we’ll start the memory as the participant selection is just starting. Traci and I, and her parents (who had joined us for the day) are seated and listen to the selection going on. As the selection finishes we’ll switch over to our stereo memory from 2000. We’ll stay with that memory, and as the extras are introduced while they are switching to the Cairo Marketplace, we’ll join back into our binaural memory from December of 2006 once again.