Welcome to For Your Amusement, a theme park podcast that aims to exhaustively evaluate the world's most popular theme park attractions to determine if they are world class.

I'm Ryan Bergara.

I'm Byron Marin.

And for this episode's featured attraction, we become speed in pursuit of the coveted Piston Cup to discuss

Radiator Springs Racers in Disney's California Adventure in California. And joining us today in Ornament

Valley is none other than David Erickson from Fresh baked. Thank you for joining us here. Now,

David, covering this attraction, this was a choice that you made. What made this call to you?

For me, Raider Springs Racers, it hit every single box in terms of what I think a great attraction should be within the Disney, you know, environment. And for those of you who don't know, fresh baked, I think it's the leading news source for anything Disneyland Resort related. So if you haven't checked that out, go ahead and check that over on YouTube. he does an amazing job.

Always has boots on the ground.

Boots on the ground.

He's my number one resource.

We're all info related. So if you haven't checked that out, go ahead and check that over on YouTube. He does an amazing job. Always has boots on the ground. He's my number one resource for all info related to the Disneyland resort. What got you into all of that? Well, 13 years ago, I had purchased a season pass for the family. And back in that time, you had to go check in with your annual pass to go to the certain space to get a photo taken.

And they give you your card. It was a whole process. Yeah. And we went to the processed place. I remember that. Yeah. And at this point, it was the DCA. But I just remember a feeling of being home. It was super crowded. It was intense. Their energy was super high because it was Christmas Day. But I'm just like, this is, I'm going to be here every time, always, forever.

Processing center on Christmas Day. That doesn't sound like a fun place. It was, it was not enjoyable, but I didn't care. And that's, that's the thing is that, you know, in a matter of fact, later that night, we had other issues that were like, also not enjoyable, but I didn't care. I live off the energy and the

pandemonium that is going to a theme park. My mom, she actually became, you know, a park head

by taking us to the parks when we were kids and so on and so on and so on. And now we're here.

And now I've constructed a teaky room and monument of that. Radiator Springs, this was maybe

the first attraction that I followed pretty closely on like the message boards in terms of the construction all the way to its completion because I was in college at the time and I was just so excited because I went to college at Chapman which is like just down the road from Disneyland. So I knew that as soon as this thing opened, I was going to pop on over and ride this baby in person. So I was pretty stoked.

Still not disappointing.

No, it's still not.

But when you said you wanted to cover this, I was like, oh, yeah, this is going to be great. We'll get into more of why we like this ride or don't like this ride or whatnot later. But before we get into all that, let's get to some history here. We're going to take this back to February 8th of 2001.

This is the opening of Disney's California Adventure.

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