Inside How Disney Uses Food To Build Worlds

Series XM podcasts. [MUSIC] This song is so iconic.

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“I'd do it a little bit about the sanity of the people who have to work here.”

I guess I'd be honest. [MUSIC] This is the sport full. It's not for foodies. It's for eaters, I'm Dan Pashman.

Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Quick reminder that our Boston live show is next week. My guests will include Matt Sheer, aka Reporter Matt, and Ian Kosh from GBH. The show's almost sold out, so you better get on it quick. Details and tickets at sportfull.com/live.

Alright, here we go. My family, we're big Disney fans. We've been lucky enough to go to Disney World a couple of times over the years.

And I always love the way Disney creates whole universes.

They put thought into every detail, even the trash cans. Almost everyone is different, painting to be part of its surroundings. The rides and attractions, I mean, yeah, of course they're fun, but also they each tell a story, often building on a story from a movie, taking it new directions.

“And food is one key way that they do all that.”

The first time I rode Tiana's bayou adventure, the ride that used to be splash mountain, I saw that food is a theme throughout, which makes sense, Tiana's a chef. But when I was in the queue, I noticed a gumbo recipe on the wall in a frame. It felt so specific, I wanted to know more about that recipe. Is it a real recipe?

If you follow it, will you get gumbo? If so, who's recipe is it? So when the folks at Disney reached out and offered me a rare behind the scenes look and how the magic across their parks is made, it did not take me long to say yes. One quick note, Disney did cover part of my family's trip there, including providing

free tickets into the parks, but Disney did not have any say in the content of this episode itself. Okay. When I got to Disney World, I had a few stops to make before I got to Tianas. Up first, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba

First, b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b star wars more than anything in the world and all they wanted to do was pilot the Millennium Falcon. We have that here and people cry getting on that ride because it's wish fulfillment from when they were like five years old to now they're big and grown and have kids of their own,

but they get back to that moment. This is Thomas Neeter Heiser. He's a senior creator, producer, a Walt Disney Imagineeering. Imagineeers are the people behind the rides, the restaurants and almost everything else you see at Disney Parks. They're in charge of design and development, but also storytelling and innovation. For me it's like no more humbling work. When people are coming to this space and you're like yeah they're going to experience joy in every type of form

from parade to pretzel. Thomas and I meet up at Ogas Cantina, which was inspired by the

intergalactic die bar in the first Star Wars movie. The Cantina and Star Wars is on the planet Tatooine.

This one is on but two. A world created specifically for the theme park. It's not at any of the movies. That's an example of how Disney Parks don't just replicate something from a film. They expand the story. I'm sure that people who designed this space study the original Cantina meticulously and it shows. But in order to give you the feeling you're really there they had to do more than that. Because there's not much in that famous scene that tells you what people in this bar are actually

drinking. One of the only clues we have about what anyone in this galaxy might drink is that early in Star Wars when Luke is at home. He takes a sip of something that looks like blue milk. Like Stephanie, let's talk for a minute about blue milk. Because that only appears for a split second really in the original Star Wars movie. This is Stephanie Dold, Disney Bearish director. She explains that early in the development or pretty much anything new at Disney,

there's an intensive brainstorming period called the blue sky process. During this phase, sky is the limit. People can throw it any ideas for everything from the day core, to the rides, to the food and drink. And they gave the blue sky treatment to blue milk. At one point we thought, is it more tropical? Is it pineapples? We've gone through all the different flavors. Strawberry, chocolate milk. All the things that you can get out there in the real

“world today. But it was just how do we take something that's very relatable and sweeten it up a bit?”

How would you describe the flavor profile of blue milk? What you landed on Stephanie? I'd say it's a thicker consistency of a regular milk with the over essence of the Nella that helps bring that core memory back to maybe a thinner ice cream. Do you remember when you were a child and maybe you had that bowl of ice cream in front of you, but you would let it melt

And so, blue milk is non-dairy. It's made of the combination of coconut and rice milk.

“As we talk, a tray of drinks arrives, including the glass of blue milk. I've had it before,”

but I'm happy to have another taste. It's so funny that there's a perception that as you know, like the color of a drink. It's blue. Right. But the color of any drink, I'm sure that's what you think about it every single drink that you designed. What's the color going to be?

It's such an important part of the perception of a drink. When I first touched it to my lips,

I was like, "Oh, it does taste kind of blue." The blue milk has little icy bits that give it a slushy vibe, making it the kind of drink you're more likely to want on a 90-degree day. My favorite detail of all, when they were trying to decide exactly what shade of blue the milk should be, they even considered the fact that there would be condensation on the cup, which would dull the color. So they made the drink extra bright to account for that. They really do think of everything.

Now there are more drinks to try, like the Correlian Spike cold brew with purple Ube foam. First sip? Oh. What's that other flavor? Hmm. Maybe a little strong, a little morning pick me up. Yeah, you know, there's caffeine in here. I like that. Some caffeine? Yeah. You get a little

“bit of, you might get a hint of the bourbon that's a nut as well. Oh, that's what it is.”

I'm like, what else is in here besides coffee? You're like, maybe it's just, it's bourbon. Yes,

I forgot this was an alcoholic drink. God, and that's what it is. It's a third in the morning,

we're in the Cantina having a bourbon. Okay. I'm just going to have a sip of the foam. What I love about this drink Stephanie is that I can tell that you, I'm speaking now as a parent, who has come through these parks with my kids when they're little and when they're a little older. This is the drink. It's three or four o'clock in the afternoon. The kids are a little overheated. It's 85 degrees outside and, you know, you're having a great time, but you're also like,

everyone's flagging an energy a little bit. You can tell that kids are on the precipice of a meltdown and you come into a place in its air conditions and you sit down and then as the parent, you get yourself a cold brew with a shot of bourbon in it and it just sets you right. You're like, okay, we can make it so the park closes now. It's it's the afternoon refresher, right? I'm not sure how much eBay I taste in the foam on top, but putting purple foam on something that looks like

a nice coffee definitely adds to the otherworldly vibe. As does the buzz button tingling foam in a sweet fruity cocktail called the fuzzy taunt. Oh, now it now and my tongue is really tingling. I like that. It's like a szechuan peppercorn type vibe. It takes a second. What creates the tingling? So it's actually a flower and it gets broken down and created into a foam. If you've ever

“been in the cantina and you see the bubbling foam in the back bar area, that's what they're using”

to top on that beverage frame. Got it. All right, I'm going to try one of those. The menu at the cantina includes some snacks, but it's mainly meant to be a bar with non alcoholic drinks, too, of course. That said, none of these beverages are actually in Star Wars. So when you're building a world based off the movies, how do you know what belongs in it? I mean, I sort of think there are no limits, right? This is a bar where a creature that looks like a mini blue elephant is

playing a keyboard. Anything's possible. But as Thomas, the imaginary you heard earlier told me, it turns out, there are rules. And the keepers of those rules work in Lucasfilm's Star Wars cannon department. Yes, there is a cannon department and I would love to see the resumes that come in when a job there opens up. And so the imaginary team that worked on this space and the land and the attractions and part of Star Wars Galaxy's Edge were with Lucasfilm in the trenches all day,

every day, making sure that everything fit canonically as the cannon of Star Wars is expanding in every possible way between the movies, the books, the comic books, the video games. All of that has to connect because we're going to have fans and guests that know those tiny details. And so

we always need to be up on it, too. There are best friends when it comes to creation. I can recall

time I had made a beverage for part of the franchise for Star Wars. And I had named it something and they said that, absolutely could never happen. What did you want to name me? I can't devolve that. But I can tell you that-- Can you tell me why they said that it wouldn't work? Because it wouldn't be on this planet. And so if it wouldn't be on the planet about to, it couldn't be. So we had to rework that beverage to make it fit into the storyline. And everything that you've seen

in taste that today has gone through that process. So if you think even the the lightest things such as the Cold Brewer, the Occventy, all of that has to go back to franchise, we get their approval on the flavor profile, the taste of it, the naming of the beverage before it ever hits the planet

with certain, you know, the willing suspension of disbelief here. So like why is it okay to have

“Cold Brewer but not okay to have a certain name? I think it's because it's the reality of”

what a guest needs in the daytime versus the the theming and the storytelling and trying to bring that together. And really proving you had these guests in this part we need the Cold Brewer. Right. Help us develop the storyline to get it to make it happen. Now that I had a couple of drinks, I'm getting hungry. So I had to toy story land to get some food around up rodeo. The restaurant itself is a scene that could be in toy story. It's taking place

in Andy's backyard where he's playing rodeo with his toys and all the toys in the place are huge because you're the size of a toy. And so the idea behind this is really that the guests can come

in here and be part of that rodeo experience become a toy live as a toy and enjoy Andy's story.

This is Disney Imagineer Ben Van Buesicum, the creative director for Roundup rodeo. He led the process to come up with this concept which involved a lot more of those blue sky sessions. The job of developing a restaurant around the concept belonged to Chef Brian Piseki. He runs the flavor lab which creates menus for many of the eateries in the parks. When Ben told Chef Brian that the story of the restaurant would take place in a backyard Brian quickly zeroed

in on classic backyard fair. Barbecue. But he says that's just the beginning of the process. So some of the things that we went back to the movies to look for or didn't find and then

“would ask Ben is like, what is a family live? What's the if we're going to do a backyard cookout?”

What's the region? How do we theme the food to where he lives? Of course the restaurant would also need drinks. Just then the drink I ordered arrives. It's still not even 10 a.m. I've been so excited to taste this. Growing up is peanut butter jelly, frozen screwball peanut butter whiskey. Minute made vanilla smoothie mix grape jelly. I love PB and J. Oh my god. That is so good. So they had the drinks for the restaurant. They had the barbecue but they still needed dessert,

which meant more blue sky sessions. And as with everything else, dessert had to be delicious. Yes, but also fit into the story. Ben and Chef Brian knew they wanted to do something with forky. Because that character was a focus of a lot of discussion between my team and Ben's team. Does forky belong in this story? Is our time frame too early? When does forky show up? He shows up when Andy's a little bit older. But now Andy's young. So does he belong? How do we

weave him into the story? And I goes back to your original question to Ben of things that people don't see and how do we create more elements of that story? And it fits beautifully. The end result? Cupcake, Alaforky. It's gooey chocolate cake with a vanilla and gram cracker buttercream frosting and a sugar cookie on top. The cookie is shaped like a spork meaning like forky with his face on the white icing. Chef Brian says with all their

experience creating and selling desserts to Disney, the recipe came together pretty fast. They know what works. But for people who consider every detail, nailing the recipe is just the beginning. What we had to figure out really was the sizing of the cupcake. How big should the cookie be? What's the expression on forky's face? On the cupcake? Oh, because he actually has a face. Right? So we actually landed on three different expressions. Three different kids at a table

“may all get three different forky expressions. What are the three? I think one is happy and one's like,”

oh, and then one's like, oh, I want to redo it. So just those those forky personalities, you know,

as kids look at stuff with this incredible, incredible eye and they always compare stuff with their

brother or with their sister. It's like, they're going to pick up on it. And then you know, we did labor over those faces for months. We had, we had like, I don't know, and two dozen that we started with, you know, just then multiple platters of barbecue in front of me. I start with a rib. Half the test of a rib is like before it's even in your mouth. Sure. The meat just comes and falls off the bottom. I'm also interested to see how food Disney has evolved along with

American tastes. The sausage is spicy, linguisa, Portuguese sausage, seasoned with garlic and paprika. There's also a plant-based barbecue option that includes cauliflower with harissa drizzle and walnut gremelada. But it's not just the menu that surprises. Turns out there are tiny special touches, little Easter eggs all over round up, rodeo. Chef Brian's favorite is found on a giant carton of milk in a corner. The expiration date on that carton of milk is the release date of the original

toy story movie. Oh, so it's pretty, pretty cool. I love that. Yeah. So you probably should drink it though. I wouldn't, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I wouldn't.

old school wooden ruler. That didn't show about at me. Nearly every component of toy

story land is a toy. Fences are made from connects pieces, light posts are made out of tinkler toys, but Ben says this ruler is special. That ruler is actually scaled to the size of the restaurant. So the reason why it's only an eight inch ruler is because if you were to pull the drawings out and look at it, it's actually to the scale, which I love. So this entire place is to scale. Yeah.

“That's what we tried to do here is keep it as two scale. So this gigantic little bow peep in the center”

is eight inches tall. It's got a change. Yes. Yeah. And that was part of the deal. We wanted to create environment that had fully curated chaos on it where your eye could just keep moving and moving, but it was tightly curated. So that as you're eating this incredible, you know, banquet of food, and you're seeing this in that, you know, as a flavor profiles change or what you're finding is changing. It's a whole interactive experience. And one of the deals with that was that it would

make sense to scale at all. So everything is too scale in the restaurant, you know. I love that. Coming up, I arrive at Tiana's Bayou Adventure and get the real story of that gumbo recipe.

Plus a lot more that I never knew about Tiana. Stick around.

Sauté, you stay because it's time for some ads.

“Well, come back to this pork full. I'm Dan Pashman. Few weeks back, we aired my live show in”

Brooklyn right-shadow with best selling cookbook author and YouTuber Kenji Lopez Alt and legendary comic Judy Gold. We tackled big topics like why the restaurant industry has so many scandals. And slightly smaller topics like why people are feeding their babies sticks of butter. But one of the most heated moments of the night came when we talked about the state of the bagel, especially the news that a grown number of bagels shops are no longer serving Pumpernical bagels.

Pumpernical bagels are the best bagels. They're sweet, right? They're sweet and they taste so great with the smear. I'm telling you, I'm really upset about the Pumpernical bagel thing. And by the way, if you eat a blueberry bagel, don't ever talk to me. That episode's up now. It's called What's the State of the Bagel. Check it out. And by the way, if you missed me in Brooklyn, but still want to see me live, good news as I said I'll be in Boston on May 1st. Still, if you take it's left, find out

more at sportfull.com/live. Alright, back to Disney World. I've had a few drinks and eaten some barbeque. It's time to go on a ride. I head to Tiana's Bayou Adventure. This ride used to be splash mountain, but splash mountain included some characters from the old Disney movie Song of the South. That film was long criticized for its depiction of black people in slavery. So back in 2020, Disney announced that splash mountain would be re-themed. The ride itself would remain a log

flume with several increasingly steep drops. But the animatronic characters, music, and scenery would be totally changed, so the ride would tell in new story. For the new theme, Disney picked their 2009 film, The Princess and the Frog. Set in 1920's New Orleans, it tells the story of Tiana, whose dream is to open her own restaurant. We follow her, she grows from a kid, helping in the kitchen, into a young woman working as a waitress and trying to save up money for her place. But when she's

close to getting her big break, her dream gets snatched away. There's a royal ball, voodoo magic, a prince named Navine, and a kiss, and when all of a sudden done, she's Princess Tiana.

Tiana was Disney's first black princess. Food's obviously a big part of her journey,

but I was curious to learn how Disney incorporated food into a ride. As I learned,

“to really understand that, you have to understand not just the movie, but it's back story.”

Because Tiana's story was actually inspired by a real person, Leah Chase, who opened the iconic New Orleans restaurant, Duki Chase in 1941. Leah Chase passed away a few years back, but today generations of her family continue to run the restaurant. It's been recognized by the James Beard Foundation as an American classic. Well, you know my mother, chef Leah Chase, was a storyteller. She loved people. She loved sitting down to talk to people. And so that happened

quite frequently in the restaurant where people would come just for her advice or just to talk to her. This is Stella Chase. Leah's daughter. Disney came as well, and I've just remembered my mother did not tell me it was Disney. She just says, "Oh, I'm green. Some people and I'll be in the go room if you keep everything going and keep people quiet and away from the area." So I'm going like, "Okay, I can do that." And it wasn't too later that I found out who it was and that they just

and that Leah would be the inspiration for a character. They may use some of what I said in the new movie and I'm going like, "Oh, really?" So she was excited and I'm going like, "Okay, but more excited when she could view that movie." And we did it as a family outing with her grandchildren, her children, and we all attended the movie. Very excited. We all waited for the end to see if

“her name would be anywhere. And what was the reaction of that moment, her name came on the screen?”

"Oh, we all started clapping and jumping up, you know." I love the scene early on. Tiana is with her father, and the pot of gumbo is on the stove, on the fire, and he says, "If Tiana, what taste this? What do you think?" "Okay, I'm about to put this spoon in my way." And she takes the taste and she says, "It needs a little more Tabasco." "Done." "What?" "Well, sweetheart, this is the best gumbo I've ever tasted. It can't be here. You do all the gumbo getting there." Right. And they thrown a few splashed

the Tabasco, and then it's perfect. How true to life did that specific scene feel to you? So it brought back up to memories. The story about my mother with the Tabasco was when President Obama came, and he was eating a bowl of gumbo, and somebody brought him the Tabasco sauce. And he went to put it in the gumbo before taste in the gumbo, and my mother came out of the kitchen and said, "Tept you saying that in my gumbo you don't." So that specific scene where Tiana

adds the Tabasco, you feel like that's basically sort of a connection to the idea that once Tiana

declared the gumbo to be finished, that's it. "No one else needed to be adding any more to him."

“"No, body needed to add anything else. It was just perfect." I think it's a beautiful”

image of your mom and communicates a lot about her. It didn't matter that it was the President sitting there hugging the gumbo. He is not putting Tabasco in there." "You got it. That was my mom." But Disney took a lot more than that from their conversations with Leah Chase. In the film, Tiana works and works to save up money for a restaurant, but then she's out bid for the place by someone else. The real estate agent she's been dealing with deliver the news

with a thinly veiled comment about Tiana's race. "You know how long it took me to save that money?" "Exactly, which is why a little woman of your background would have had a hands full trying to run a big business like that. You're better off with you." "No, what did you make of that scene when you saw it?" "In the late '80s, my mother and father did want to expand the restaurant to a bigger restaurant, a fancy restaurant, so everyone will feel like they're coming to a special place.

My mother and father went through obstacles because that means they had to borrow money. And everybody was not willing to loan money to African-American business even then, but we were fortunate because at that time a black bank had just started, liberty bank,

and they were able to loan her the money. So my mother was refused by people, but never let

that get her down, kept pushing and pushing to finally she found someone to loan her the

“needy money to expand the restaurant, and that's what happened." So when the princess in the”

frog came out, it was another landmark moment in a remarkable journey for Leah Chase, from opening during segregation in 1941 to fighting for loans in the 1980s to becoming, well, an actual Disney princess. "She had the opportunity to witness so many children coming into the restaurant, dressed like Princess Tiana morning to meet the princess." "And love that." "You know, we have pictures, I'm looking at one now, you know, but so many people came to pictures,

even sent us those pictures back with my mother with little children of all races, all ages coming, and you know, she was that made her so very happy because she is about unifying people and making everyone feel special. And, you know, even to this day, we have people who

come with Tiana Princess Alfison. One little girl came and they always said, "Oh, this is Tiana's daughter."

get so old?" "That's it. Oh, okay."

Years later, when Stella's mother had passed away, Stella got a call from Disney. They wanted to open a Tiana ride. Suddenly, it was Stella who was in meetings with the Disney folks. "They did many research trips here, which I was a port of, and I'm now an honorary member of the Imagineer team. Got my cap. I should go give it over there with my cap to show you." Stella shows me a bright red hard hat with her name on the front, signifying her status as an

Imagineer. She says when the Disney team came to New Orleans to work on the ride, they were making notes not just on the food, but on the music, art, architecture, even the local plant life.

“In 2024, Tiana's bayou adventure opened in Disney World. Do you remember the first time that you”

rode the ride? "I did." "Are you a rides person? Do you like rollercoaster?" "I don't like rollercoasters." "No, I don't, but you know, nothing was gonna keep me from going on Tiana's bayou." "That's right. That's

right." So tell me about that first ride. "So that first ride, I was determined to try to keep my eyes

open, but of course it didn't happen. Eyes were down, and it was down, and I just said, "Whoo!" "But I've gone on in several times since, and it's been joyful every time, because every time I experience something different." The thing that stuck out to me the first time I rode the ride as Tiana's was your inline, and you're seeing all the, you're seeing these news clippings of Tiana becoming this big chef and the restaurant being so successful, and then there's also the framed

gumbo recipe on the wall, and it's like handwritten on a piece of, there's sort of line paper.

“"Have you seen that recipe? Did you look at it?" "Yes." "And is the framed gumbo recipe in the,”

is in the line at Tiana's your gumbo recipe?" "Yes, and it should also be the one that's in our cookbook." So yes, it is. "Wow." So in theory you can take a picture of that recipe and go home, and it's not going to be quite the same. I'm sure it won't be quite as good, but it could be roughly approximately the experience. "Right, because in New Orleans, gumbo is a big thing in families, and each family have their own little recipe that they make special for them. You know,

and we like to think I was best, and you know, we have some people saying that, and we, you have a lot of people saying, "Yeah, yeah, we do have a lot of people, and we have a lot of people who come in and say, "Taste, just like my grandmother's," and I said, "When then that's when we're doing something right." Today, Stella's in her 70s. She spent most of her life working

“at her family's restaurant and eventually running it. As she took over, she found a quote from”

George Washington Carver that really resonated with her that she keeps in mind to this day.

"Take things where they are with what you have. Make something of it and never be satisfied.

I felt my mother was never satisfied. She always thought things could be better, and you know, as a her daughter trying to do what would daughters do make their mom satisfied and happy that was a chore, and every time I do something, I thought, "Hmm, this is it." And she would be happy, but she said, "But you know, she always wanted to add something else, which now I appreciate because you always have to grow." That was my mother, and that was Tiana.

She kept performing whatever she had to do to get her restaurant, and then after coming together with the community to make something even better. Coming up, I tour the Tiana ride at Disney World with one of the imagined years who worked on it. We'll find out what special smell they pipe in while you're waiting in line. Then, we'll ride it. Stick around.

Hope you're hungry because it's time for some ads. Welcome back. To get a rare behind the scenes tour of Tiana's Bayou Adventure, I have to get to Magic Kingdom over the park opens. As it is, people sometimes wait two hours to go on this ride. The Disney folks aren't about to pause the line so I can spend 10 minutes reading the gumbo recipe on the wall. I meet up with Wendy Aguila, senior project coordinator

on Tiana's Bayou Adventure. She was part of the Imagineering feasibility team. People who transform a blue sky idea into reality. Because of my background in theater and being very into how to make a production and how to make the magic, I really loved right away the logistics and the,

in the physical world. When was the first time you saw the princess in the frog?

“I actually went to watch it in theaters in 2009, so I went to the present credential.”

Like other rides at Disney, it's telling of Tiana's story begins when you enter the queue. And like other rides, this one pushes Tiana's story forward. It's set a year after the movie ends. And as Stella Chase said, Tiana continues to push to make things better. In the story of the ride, Tiana has now launched a business called Tiana's Foods, packing and shipping pickled vegetables, hot sauce, and more to customers all over. As we go through the queue, you'll see a lot of props

of her specific hot sauces and her branding, but also we'll see a bunch of things that she is receiving from other places, right? She can't farm everything here. So it's understanding, basing that in the real world of how a production like this would actually happen and come about. Like I love that you actually made a distinction between like, well, these are the things she would have been able to grow. Right. And these are the things she would have had to order.

We have a lot of conversations about that. So Tiana's new business is the backdrop to this ride's main story, which is that Tiana's planning a big, martygrop party.

You know, the problem is that Louis, the trumpet playing alligator,

forgot to book a band for it. And so you'll kind of get glimpses of that as you're standing here in the queue and you're listening to the audio. There's a radio station playing. And so we have

“a announcement out to anyone to see, hey, are you a musician? You want to come play in our band?”

And so in the movie, Tiana has this drawing which she made as a kid of what she dreams her restaurant will look like. She carries it with it throughout the film. Now we see Tiana's office and that same drawing is in a frame on the wall when he points out more details. We have a clock in station, right? So this is where her employees will come in, clock in. This is where they have their aprons ready for the day. Yeah, definitely a place where everyone starts their day,

not only Tiana, but also her employees. So there are names on the time cards. One of them is Leah. Yep. That is correct. Yes. That is a nice little reference to her. We continue walking through the queue, which you can take yourself to Tiana's by you, Jim, to pick up the best hot sauces in town. Great. And eventually we get to Tiana's kitchen. So here we really get a big

bigger backstory of her family and who her father was who inspired her how to cook, right? And you know what the gumbo is specifically, a big shout out to her father as we see in the film as well. And of course, the Bing A's and we do have a really fun center as well where you can smell the Bing A's in the kitchen. So there's like a scent piped in or something. There is and it is delicious. So yeah, so this is like a smell sweet. Yes, definitely. And there's a fun little nod here as

well where you can see her recipe card right over there. So now we're in the kitchen. Yes. There's not sort of like an old fashioned stove oven. That is an authentic oven. Yep. Is it actually a period specific? Mm-hmm. So this is like a hundred-year-old. Yes, that is a different taste. That is accurate.

Yes, our props team did an amazing job here specifically. And now we come to the gumbo

recipe. A pause again, as I did when I first saw it. But this time knowing that this is actually the Duky Chase recipe, it's so much more meaningful. As Stella Chase said, the recipe did appear

“in the Duky Chase cookbook many years ago. So it's not a secret. But still, this is probably”

the most famous gumbo in America. Over the decades, Leah Chase served it to activists, artists, and presidents. She often said, in my dining room, we changed the course of America over a bowl of gumbo and some fried chicken. And here it is, hanging on the wall in Disney World. Every year millions of people pass by it. A lot of them don't really know what they're looking at. But those who do know they're walking past a piece of American food history. Eventually, we make our way to

the front of the queue and prepare to get on the ride itself. I spoke to an imagine at the other day who said that one of the blue sky ideas you heard for this ride was to replace the water with lemonade. And that would have been great. The thinking was that you could splash in the face. It will taste good. Well, I can't confirm that. But yeah, that would be a great, a great dream, I guess. It's a really hot day. It's fun to go in this ride and you went and cool off

in the you walk around the park. Yeah, I don't know that I want to be soaked in lemonade for the next day. No, definitely not. I'm sure the bees would be very happy. Yeah. Yeah, I don't even think about that. That's another reason why. But hey, that's the blue sky phase. Exactly. The park still a few minutes from opening, which means Wendy and I get the first ride of the day just for us. It's very exciting being here right before the ride opened. Yeah,

it isn't the air. It's just a patient. Definitely. All the team is here ready. And it's like you know that in just a few minutes the gate's going to open. And the piece and quiet, it was here when we first arrived is going to be turned upside down. Finally, we got on the ride. Since it's early morning and a bit chilly, I don't want to get soaked. Wendy says the third

Hey, it's the big drop. How old are you? I would love for y'all to play it my part in the night.

“As we continue, we're leading up to this big, mardi-drop party. With a help of her friends,”

Tiana's trying to put together a band and get the food ready. At one point we get shrunk down into frogs like Tiana was in the movie. Then we begin the long-assent to the big final drop. All right, we're at the top. Here we go.

Wow. Wendy, if I used to sit in the third row doesn't get wet. I'm sorry.

“Turns out the third row of the log only stays dry if there are people in the second row of”

the log to block the water. Anyway, after the big drop, the story concludes. We come around the band to find a massive mardi-drop party.

My thanks to Charles Doval, Lindsay Griginski, Nicole Dick and an everyone at Disney for the help of

this episode. Next week on the show, I chat with Eva Longoria. She tells me about eating her way through

“Spain and France for a documentary series and why in addition to being a big Hollywood star,”

she's also a huge nerd. That's next week. Why wait for that one? Check out last week's show about one person's experience living with Alpha Gala, tick-born condition that can make you a allergic to mammal meat. That episode's up now. And hey, did you know you can listen to the sportful in the serious XM app? Yes, the serious XM app it has all your favorite podcasts. Plus over 200 ad free music channels curated by genre and era. Plus live sports covers. You're podcasting

app have that and there's interviews with a list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. Right now, sportful listeners can get three months free of the serious XM app by going to seriousxm.com/sportful. This episode was produced by me along with Managing Producer and the Morgan Stern and Senior Producer on Drace O'Hara. It was edited by Camille Stanley. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. And our intern is Morgan Johnson.

Music help from Black Label Music. The sportful is a production of serious XM podcasts are executive producers Camille Stanley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman. And I'm Alyssa from Jupiter Florida reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.