Ep. 753: Mandalorian and Grogu review; Disneyland technology with Roland Betancourt
Mousetalgia! - Your Disneyland Podcast
Jeff Baham
4.4 • 776 Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2026
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Jeff welcomes author and professor Roland Betancourt to the show (41:31) to discuss the history of technology at Disneyland and his new book "Disneyland and the Rise of Automation." We discuss the nature of post-war automation and the mid-20th century, and how Walt Disney took many influences and distilled them into his automated verion of themed entertainment. Also - Jeff reviews "The Mandalorian and Grogu," (18:50) and we talk about the extensive fan-service throughout the film: cam there be too much of a good thing? Plus - Jeff follows up on the Topps Disneyland 70 trading cards discussion and reveals how he finally decided to go about collecting this behemoth set.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to Mousetalgia for the week of May 25 Memorial Day, 2026. |
| 0:19.0 | Hang on to them hats and glasses, because this here is the wildest podcast in the wilderness. |
| 0:27.1 | This is Mousalgia. |
| 0:29.4 | Carpe Kingdom, seize the magic. |
| 0:43.5 | Welcome to Mousalja, your podcast about Disneyland, Disney history, and living a Disney life. |
| 0:46.0 | My name is Jeff, and I'm your host this week. |
| 0:57.0 | Before we start, let's thank our sponsor for the week, M.E.I. Mouse fan travel is a fee-free travel agency that specializes in Disney and cruising and all kinds of things. But if you have a Disney plan in your heart that you want to get taken care of, |
| 1:02.2 | maybe you want to go to the East Coast and go to Walt Disney World, maybe you want to take a Disney cruise, |
| 1:05.9 | an adventure by Disney, maybe a Disney park and another continent. give Mouse Fan Travel a call and see what they can |
| 1:12.9 | do for you. There's no obligation and Disney pays them, not you. So nothing to lose. Mousefantravel.com. |
| 1:19.1 | Okay, so welcome, my friends. Today we have all kinds of things to talk about. Our key segment today |
| 1:25.6 | is going to be an interview with Roland Betancourt. |
| 1:28.1 | So Roland Betancourt is a professor of art history, I think, at UC Irvine. |
| 1:33.9 | He's a Guggenheim fellow, so he has a lot of accolades. |
| 1:38.0 | And it's really interesting, you know, to hear an art historian talk. |
| 1:40.6 | I am a art teacher at a high school conservatory. |
| 1:43.1 | So it was fun to kind of talk to him both during the interview and afterwards a little bit. |
| 1:48.2 | But what he's going to talk to us about is really interesting because as Disney fans, we hear a lot of the same names over and over for some good reason. |
| 1:58.6 | And also, I would posit for some not so great reasons, nothing nefarious, |
| 2:03.7 | but I think Disney likes to tell us about the people that it can show us stuff. So if there |
| 2:08.5 | are people involved in the history of Disney, whether it's animation or the Disney parks or any |
| 2:13.1 | part of Disney, where there's lots of concept art or paintings or drawings or photos. |
... |
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