Up the Waterfall

Up the Waterfall – The EPCOT Center Episode – Part 1

29 September 2019 by Suzannah Otis Leave a Comment

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journey into imagination 1983 — Zanna with the original Figment topiary and mini jumping waters

When we talked about actually creating a podcast for the past 5 years, I knew that one of the main things I’d want to discuss is the original EPCOT Center. I knew that for me personally, that was where my love of Disney parks originated, and the effect that EPCOT Center had had on me growing up. I also knew that my husband, Scott, had an equally passionate love for the original EPCOT, and that we could both probably talk about it for hours on end. And boy did we.

I initially thought we’d maybe have 2 parts to this episode, Future World and World Showcase, but it soon became apparent that we’d need at least 3 episodes to properly discuss and share all of our EPCOT memories. In this first episode, Scott and I talk about how we first heard about EPCOT, and our first visits, and made it around to most of Future World east. We discuss the attractions in that section, the music and atmosphere of the original EPCOT Center, and of course, what we miss about that.

Whether you are an original EPCOT visitor like us, or a fan, or new to Disney parks, we hope you’ll listen in and get a feel for what it was like Growing Up EPCOT. We thank you for listening in or watching, and hope you enjoy our little corner of the Disney podcasting world. As always, we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast wherever you normally listen, rate us (5 stars would be amazing!) and even comment so hopefully more people can discover us too. You can also watch us on YouTube to see all of our silly facial expressions, and the books we reference in this episode. We’d love to hear from you, let us know what you think of the podcast, your favorite EPCOT Center memories, what you want to hear us discuss, just say hi, we welcome all feedback!

Journey into Imagination 1984 — This is a terrible quality picture, but I referenced this in the episode. I’m the one clinging to my dad’s arm because I don’t want the ride to be over… 🙁

For this particular episode, we wanted to give a guide of sorts to where you can learn more about the original EPCOT Center we describe, if you didn’t get a chance to experience it yourself, or if you’d just like to take a stroll down memory lane.

Zannaland’s Love Letter to EPCOT

Zannaland’s 1983 EPCOT Trip Diary

Martin’s Vids – Martin Smith has been chronicling Disney parks for decades, and compiling incredibly detailed complete history tributes to extinct attractions. We’re linking to his entire EPCOT Future World playlist, where you can experience EPCOT Center as it once was.

Here are some of the books we discussed, since they are out of print, these are all from 3rd party Marketplace sellers on amazon, but still, some good options and prices are out there. I’m just linking one of the Pictorial Souvenirs, but all of the ones from the 80’s are great fun to flip through. We’ll be doing a little EPCOT Books guide soon, so stay tuned for that as well. Click the photos below to get to the amazon^* page for these books.

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Up the Waterfall: Top 5* Worst* Disney Rides*

22 September 2019 by Suzannah Otis Leave a Comment

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Episode 4 of Up the Waterfall podcast is here! And you may have noticed a few asterisks in the title: Top 5* Worst* Disney Rides*…Welll, if you know Scott and I at all, it’s very difficult for us to narrow down anything to a manageable number, especially Scott. So while I had about 7 worst Disney rides on my list, he had about…15? We don’t list allll of those, but we do have a few “honorable mentions” (or I guess dishonorable?) in there, and we may go off on a tangent or two as we tend to do. But it’s all part of the fun and we hope it inspires you all to join in the discussion too.

We aimed to list ONLY worst Disney “rides” and not worst “attractions” as Disney calls them, in an attempt to weed out some of the non-ride experiences that may have made the list. Of course, then I completely break that rule right off the bat. Oops. You’ll have to listen in to hear which one that was. We also for the most part only list worst rides we have experienced and try to remain organized with our lists.

Disney’s best and worst rides can be a heated topic, so we do have a couple of controversial picks in there too! Do you agree with our choices? Think we got some wrong? We’d love to hear your least favorites or what you consider to be the worst rides at a Disney park.

There are also a few things we mentioned in this podcast that I’d like to link here in case you wanted to follow up:

One was Passport 2 Dreams where Foxxy discusses The Case for Florida’s Pirates of the Caribbean, a fascinating and detailed read, as always. If you haven’t checked out Passport2Dreams, we urge you to for amazing Disney history discussions.

Additionally, I spoke about a favorite part of the original Kilimanjaro Safaris in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, where the safari driver would say “let’s see what’s on the radio” and play this song. The song is on an album by African Dawn. The song is track 4, Hapa Duniani, and the part from the ride starts at 2:45 in. We hope you enjoy it; let us know if you remember that part of the ride!

Thanks for listening or watching as always, and if you like what you hear, we’d love you to subscribe and give us 5 stars on the Apple Podcast app or wherever you listen to podcasts, so more people can discover us and listen in too! You can also subscribe to Zannaland or give us a thumbs up on YouTube as well. Thank you for your support!

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Up the Waterfall: The History of Epcot’s Festivals

15 September 2019 by Suzannah Otis Leave a Comment

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It’s hard to imagine a time before Epcot Festivals, especially if you just started going to the park in the last 20 years. In this week’s Up the Waterfall episode, we discuss the history of festivals at Epcot. Why they came about, how they’ve changed over the years, and what we think of all the never-ending festivals at one of our favorite parks. Times have certainly changed since 1994 and the first ever Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival, in fact there are now 4 main festivals taking place in Epcot throughout the year.

Listen in, or watch as we discuss all the festivals, our favorite parts and not-so-favorite parts. We’d love to hear your thoughts on Epcot Festivals too! Do you like the festivals in Epcot? What’s your favorite part and what do you like or not like about those festivals? See what we think on this week’s episode.

Here’s a link to the EPCOT VIP Lounges I mentioned in this episode, if you’d like to see!

This is our third episode for the Up the Waterfall podcast, you can subscribe on the Apple Podcast app (we’d LOVE a review so more people can discover our little show!), watch and subscribe on YouTube.com/zannaland where you can give us a thumbs up, comment, share and hit the notification bell to make sure you never miss another video.

Thanks as always for watching, listening, and reading! We hope you enjoy and if you do, share the love so we can keep bringing you more fun topics!

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Up the Waterfall: Galaxy’s Edge – Batuu Banter

8 September 2019 by Suzannah Otis Leave a Comment

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Welcome to episode 2 of Up the Waterfall!

This week, Scott and I discuss everything Galaxy’s Edge. How fans first heard about it, what the subtle differences are on both coasts, what we love about the new land, and even how we both became Star Wars fans ourselves. What’s funny is I thought this would be a quick 30 minute discussion, but we actually spoke much longer this time, and even as I write this up, I’m remembering things we didn’t talk about that I wanted to mention. (But that’s okay because we will revisit this topic when Rise of the Resistance opens here on December 5th!)

We hope you’ll join us and listen in (or watch on YouTube and check out our new permanent Up the Waterfall set (things were a little cramped in my office with cameras and a good backdrop). If you enjoyed it, why not subscribe on iTunes, (it can take 24 hours for new episodes to show up on the Apple Podcast app) give us a rating so others can find us, share on facebook or twitter, and be sure to subscribe on YouTube too to see our latest vlogs, videos and podcasts there too!

We’d love to hear from you, what are your thoughts on Galaxy’s Edge? What would you like to hear us discuss next? Let us know here, on YouTube, or any of our social media hang-outs.

Zanna: @zannaland on twitter, @zannaland on instagram, and facebook.com/zannaland

Scott: @otisney on twitter and @otisney on instagram

Christian: @tikibirdz on twitter and @tikibirdz on instagram

Thanks for listening in! Watch for a new episode every Sunday!

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New Disney Podcast! Up the Waterfall

3 September 2019 by Suzannah Otis Leave a Comment

Hello! Well, it’s all finally happening. If you’ve been following along these recent Zannaland.com changes, we’ve been talking about all the things that were coming up. With the addition of our video producer-extraordinaire, Christian (my son, who’s basically grown up with Zannaland), we’ve added more videos, vlogs, and now, a project I’ve been wanting to do basically ever since getting married to @otisney and realizing the amount of Disney history we wanted to discuss and share, a podcast! Since podcasting has grown and changed and morphed over the last 15 years, we have decided to share ours as both an audio and video podcast. We aren’t doing any fancy effects at this point, but if you want to follow along and see our faces while we talk and any props we may use as an example along the way, feel free to watch vs. just listen.

I explain this in our first episode, but we will go into it more in the future too, but the name, “Up the Waterfall” comes from Walt Disney’s Tencennial show for Disneyland’s 10th birthday. And seeing him explaining things to Julie Reihm, the first Disneyland Ambassador, just always made me instantly smile…even just watching the clip at the end of our first show put a smile on my face again. So that’s the sort of feel I wanted to have with our podcast. It’s not just a historical podcast, it’s not a news podcast, it’s a combination of all of our experiences, thoughts, and yes, knowledge (which I will admit is mostly on Scott’s side of the desk!) about Disney parks and all the made them what they were and are today. We hope you’ll listen in on our journey as we explore this podcasting path.

We’re no podcasting or even broadcasting experts, so keep that in mind as I say “um” 27 times 😛 But we’ll keep figuring things out and hopefully make a great show that keeps you wanting more.

You can listen to the podcast right here on Zannaland, there is a Podcast tab at the top of the site now, or you can (eventually, it’s not quite searchable there yet but it is there!) search “Up the Waterfall” on iTunes, or you can watch on Zannaland’s YouTube channel. You can also visit UpTheWaterfall.com for the latest show too, but everything will be shared here as well. Thank you so much for supporting all of these updates and new ventures that we’ve wanted to do for so long, and a HUGE thanks to Christian for making it all happen and pushing us to just do it, and of course Scott for his patience when it took me 5 years to get it going. 🙂

Up the Waterfall: D23 Expo, A 10 Year Retrospective

2 September 2019 by Chris Ryan Leave a Comment

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A Zannaland Podcast!

It’s finally here! Up the Waterfall is a Disney podcast I’ve wanted to do for about 5 years now and it’s finally happening! Up the Waterfall is weekly podcast hosted by Zanna (me!) and Scott Otis. Discussions range from Disney history, to theorizing on what Disney’s future holds! Anything is possible in Disneyland! Thanks to Christian, we are also uploading the podcasts as video, in case anyone wants to watch as well as listen. 🙂

Up the Waterfall, Season One
Episode 1
“D23 Expo, A 10 Year Retrospective”

A look back at the past decade of D23 fan events, remembering what some of the biggest hits or biggest misses were. Listen and then let us know your thoughts!

This episode is also available in audio-only format.

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