Join Eric for a Look into Disney 100: the Exhibition now on display in Chicago. In this episode, he recounts his visit to the pop-up exhibit and counts down his favorite items from each of the ten galleries on display. Disney 100: the Exhibition was presented by the Walt Disney Archives as part of the 100 Years of Wonder Celebration. The traveling exhibit that started in Philadelphia is currently stopped in Chicago but will soon be heading to Kansas City!
Also, Eric looks ahead to 2024 and his New Year's Resolutions for the future of the Show, As well as some upcoming Disney-themed travel that is sure to make it into some future episodes!
Thanks for listening to Synergy Loves Company: How Disney Connects to Everything.
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Disney 100 - Books mentioned in this episode! The Story of Disney 100 Years of Wonder by John Baxter and Bruce C. Steel: https://a.co/d/2DEFMGh The Art of Coloring - Disney 100 Years of Wonder: https://a.co/d/bkEf5Sx
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00:04 --> 00:06 Synergy loves company.
00:10 --> 00:53 We have this coterie of rich franchises. The company now that people want to engage with. I came here to try and continue what Walt Disney and his associates set in motion 50 years ago, which is to experiment with every new and innovative kind of entertainment possible. It's what we hope to do here to really develop something that just, more than an entertainment enterprise, it's something that contributes many other ways.
00:59 --> 41:49 Hey, this is Synergy loves company, where we explore how Disney connects to everything. I'm Eric, and I want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to keep me company and listen. And happy new year. If you're listening to this in real time, it is January. It's that time of year that we usually look back to the last year and then look forward to the new year and what's coming down the line. And today we're going to take a little inspiration from that. And at the top of the show, I'm going to take a look at something I did last year but haven't talked about yet. In December, I visited the Disney 100 exhibit in Chicago with my family. But then later on in the show, we're going to talk a little bit about what Disney stuff I have in store for the new year and how that's going to affect the show. So make sure to stick around to see what's coming up later this year. But of course, now we're going to look back to that Disney 100 exhibit. So you may have heard about this one. It started off in Philadelphia. There's one in London right now, too, over in Europe. But recently in November, the Philadelphia Disney 100 exhibition moved to Chicago. It's going to go on to Kansas City. After that, it's kind of following in Walt's footsteps. Chicago to Kansas City. But anyway, Disney 100, the exhibition is one of these new kind of pop up experiences. It kind of like they pop up a little museum or kind of like some sort of Instagram experience, and then they take it down, move it to another city, set it up, and start all over again. In Chicago, there's a company called fever that was sponsoring it. They put it in this gallery space. They have this kind of large open event space, and you could go and visit it there while it's in the city. They've done a bunch of other kinds of these pop ups throughout the city, too. But this is that special Disney one that was put together by the Disney archives and D 23 and is special for Disney's hundredth celebration. Disney 100. The exhibition is set up in kind of a little bit of a different way than you might think. Not like a book where it might be chronologically, or a biography of the company. It's set up in a way that is supposed to reflect ten of Walt Disney's philosophies, the way he looked at the work that he did, and the advancements of the Walt Disney Company to kind of reflect the layout of this exhibition. I'm going to do this podcast episode to be kind of in line with it. What we're going to do is I'm going to take you through each of those ten galleries and explain what they had to do with Disney, maybe where the name of the gallery came from in some cases, and then tell you what my favorite item in each of those galleries are, or maybe favorite items, because there's a couple of them where it was really hard to choose. So let's get to it. When my family arrived, we did have time tickets, so we had to wait a little bit before we could get into the first room, which isn't one of the galleries. So we're not actually starting our countdown yet. But that first room was something I do want to address, because it was something that was super hyped about this exhibition, and that's the Walt Disney hologram. Now, I heard mixed reviews. I did hear some people who thought it was the coolest thing since the Tupac hologram, which I never saw, and some people thought it was not so cool. I gotta admit, I was kind of underwhelmed by the Walt Disney hologram. It was definitely projected. Maybe it was where we were standing in the room. We were kind of far back, and it just looked like it was part of the screen. What I thought was more entertaining about this space was the screen kind of bled into the walls as far as projection went. So, like, as you were watching the screen, something might pop off and then be projected onto the wall. So I kind of found that more exciting than the Walt Disney hologram. I had high hopes for it, because I had heard that some people really liked it. But I don't know if you really liked it or you didn't. I'd like to hear what you might have had to say about it. So if you saw this, maybe in Philadelphia or in Chicago, let me know what you think. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me what you loved about it. But anyways, let's get into the galleries. There are ten galleries. I'm going to list them off as we go, and I'll tell you all about them. And then, of course, my favorite thing in each one. So the first gallery that we came to was called where it all began. So when the Disney 100 exhibition started, one of the ways they built it was that it would be great for all generations. So if you came with a multi generation family, much like to the Disney parks, everyone would get something out of it. It's not chronological, so it would have something know more modern times, like Moana, maybe something like turning red, or it might have something that know from the earliest parts of Disney animation, maybe some snow white stuff. This room, though, where it all began, does not have that kind of thing. This one is purely chronology. After this one, we start to spread out into different eras, but this first gallery is totally biographical. One thing I found cool about the name where it all began, that's the same catchphrase that the Walt Disney birthplace home uses. There's actually a picture of the birthplace home, which was cool because it wasn't too far from this location that I visited Walt Disney's birthplace home earlier in 2023. So what this gallery is all about is it shows off early sketches, photographs, telegrams, things that are significant to the history of Walt Disney's early life and him and Roy founding the company. My favorite item, and this took me a while to kind of figure out which one would be my favorite item for this list. But my favorite item in this gallery was the skeleton dance sketch. So the skeleton dance was the very first silly symphony, and it was pretty much done totally by ubiworks. Now, I have a personal connection to the skeleton dance. There was this video at the grocery store video rental place that I used to take out as a kid all the time, and it had the skeleton dance on it. And I thought it was, like, the coolest thing ever. It was black and white, but the way that the skeletons moved all wavy, it just resonated with me. I don't know why. I just thought it was totally cool. So the skeleton dance, ever since I was a little kid, kind of stuck with me. And whenever I see things from it, I have this weird nostalgia for that early 90s, even though it's from way back, way back in the. Love it. So to see an original sketch from the skeleton dance, so original piece of art, that just really kind of struck me as like, wow, this is some original Disney stuff. And it really helped set the tone for what I was going to see in the exhibit. All right, let's keep it going to the next gallery. The second gallery was called where do stories come from? And it shares its title with an episode from the Disneyland anthology show in 1956. So an episode of that show was called where do stories come from? And spent the hour explaining where stories like Disney's stories come from. So this gallery showed a focus on the stories and fairy tales that inspired the Disney classics that we know and love. But it was really filled with concept art and prop items from the movies, like those big bejeweled prop story books that opened up the classic princess movies, the big hand turning the pages. Those are the coolest things. They had them. They're massive. I loved seeing those. They also had some things like the animation model costumes that the people who were modeling for the characters, like Pinocchio, and that would wear as they kind of moved around on a film stage to be a reference model for the animators, which were pretty cool. But my absolute favorite item in this second gallery was the snow globe from Mary Poppins. I love the song feed the birds. I love the history of it being Walt Disney's favorite song. I love that he would make the Sherman brothers play that song for him on Friday afternoons after a long work week. I just love it. But I also love the story about how Dave Smith found that snow Globe in a janitor's closet. He would explore the studios when he was the archivist back in the 70s, really up until he stopped working for Disney. He would just explore spaces, looking for things. And he came across the snow globe from Mary Poppins just in a janitor's closet. Apparently, the janitor had found it thrown away, thought it was cool, pulled it out of the garbage and put it on the shelf. I can't believe it almost got thrown away. But Dave Smith was there to rescue it, to save it, and we have it. And now it was part of the Disney 100 exhibition. Now, the coolest thing about how they present it, if you know about the snow globe from the movie, is when you see the snow globe in the movie, it kind of shows the birds flying through it, and it's part of the montage of the song feed the birds. In the exhibition, you would look into a small little window. It was pretty much an unassuming window, but inside of it, you would see the snow globe. You would see the scene behind it. And they projected these birds to make it look like they were flying right through the snow globe in the scene, just like in the movie. It was really a pretty cool experience to see it that way. So that little extra magic they added to it that, I think, put it over the edge for me. The third gallery is called the illusion of life. And the significance of this gallery's title is that it shares its name with a famous book about animation by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson, who were two of the original nine old men. There's a great documentary about Frank and Ollie that you can watch on Disney, plus, actually, and of course, just like that book itself, this gallery is dedicated to disney animation. It really focused a lot on characters from animation. There were these cool color flip cards where you could try to guess what character it was based on, the color palette. They had this giant touch screen where you could scroll through different characters, see some of the ideas that went into making them, and some different concept art and things like that. So it was a really cool room to be in, that focused on characters. Some of my favorite items were the animation Mackettes, the little inspirational models, those 3d concept art models that the animators would work with when they're drawing the characters at different angles and things like that. And they really had mackettes from really every Disney era. There was like a funny little buz Lightyear, one that looked nothing like Buzz Lightyear, but Pixar used as an early kind of model and inspiration. But my absolute favorite one of the mackettes was the judge doom from who framed Roger Rabbit. I thought it was kind of absurd that Judge Doom, who's played by a human in the movie, except for, like, a few parts of his face, would have an animation Mackette, because, I mean, technically, he is an animated character, even though he is a human character also, or at least he looks like a human character. He's Christopher Lloyd, but he's also animated, and he's totally diabolical. And it was really cool to think of animated characters in that way, even if they were kind of live action animated characters. But where illusion of life was all about animated characters. Well, mostly about animated characters. The spirit of adventure in discovery was all about live action. The fourth gallery was dedicated to those adventurous live action films. This is the one that had those Disney action adventure films, but also those Marvel and Star wars films. So there you go. For all those Marvel and Star wars fans out there, this is where your story starts kicking in. Here in the fourth gallery, they had some really cool items for marvel and Star wars. They had some helmets from Marvel. They had a porg from Star wars. And you could even see kind of the electronic puppetry, like cord hookup. If you kind of looked from the side in the back at it, it was really cool. I got a picture of that. I'll post it on Instagram. You could see where you could kind of see that cord popping out the back. But my absolute favorite item of the spirit of adventure and discovery was the mini nautilus that they used for filming 20 leagues under the sea. The submarine itself was probably only about 6ft from the front to the back, from the nose to tail. So it was one of those really cool things that reminded me of watching the practical effects that they would show in Star wars. But then if you watch the ILM documentary, you can see that really, those are just tiny models of tie fighters and x wings. And the same happened with this nautilus. So even though you would think of the nautilus as something being gigantic, it's actually the one that they filmed was not as big. I mean, it's still pretty big. Like, I don't think I could lift it myself, but it's not as big as you would think the movie would make it. Look, now, I got to tell you something. I have never actually seen 20 leagues under the sea. Don't hold it against me. I'm actually fixing it very soon. I'm on another podcast called the Rare Cuts Media Society, and one of the things we do is we pick different movies or music each month to make a whole panel of people listen to and give their thoughts. We're currently doing a little bit of a theme where we're picking movies that we've always been meaning to watch but never have gotten around to it. And my pick for February is 20 leagues under the seas. So I'm watching it for that podcast. I'll have that episode on that other feed for rare cuts media society coming soon. And of course, I'll let you know when it's out if you're following me on socials, so you could take a listen to that, because that's going to be one of those where rare cuts media society dives into Disney again. Yes, pun intended, because we're going to watch 20 leagues under the sea. The next gallery in the Disney 100 exhibition is called the Magic of Sound and music. And this is a good time to mention that all of these galleries have really, really cool corresponding poster art that goes along with them. So the magic of sound and music, for instance, has a picture of Professor Owl, which I thought was a pretty deep cut because he's from the Disney Adventures and music series that came out in 1953. It had whistle toot, plunkin, boom, and melody. There were only ever two shorts. But Professor Owl, you might remember if you were a sing along songs fan back in the 90s, he was used in those videos, too. But I loved seeing Professor Owl on the poster for the Magic of sound and music. So this one, I'm guessing you can guess that a gallery called the Magic of sound and music would be all about Disney recordings, like Disneyland Records, Buena Vista records, but also the songs that are in Disney movies and that wonderful music that we're used to. So throughout this section, we had things like listening stations where you could actually hear Disney music. There was some sheet music from original scores. And then there was my favorite thing, all the different little devices, Foley devices, they would be called in filmmaking that they used to make the sound effects. And my absolute favorite one was Tinkerbell's jingles. So whenever Tinkerbell speaks, I guess you would call it speaking in the Peter Pan movie, the original Peter Pan movie, not all of that Disney fairy stuff, but in the original Peter Pan movie, when Tinkerbell speaks, you hear this kind of like jingle jingling, and it sounds like bells. But they had this device that was kind of like wires all connected to a frame. And on those wires, there were these little shards of metal that would kind of clang together. It looked like a medieval torture device, I'm not going to lie. Or like some really creepy mobile that you would scare a child with by hanging it over their bed. It did not look pretty, but it made that beautiful kind of jingle jangling noise that we know as Tinkerbell's voice. It was pretty cool to see that. That's what they used to get the sound of Tinkerbell. Gallery number six was called the world around us. And the significance of this name is that it shares a name with a Disney book for kids from the Disney Fun to learn and read series, the world around us. These are those books that you could get from the grocery store. I know I had a couple of them. You would save stamps at the grocery store, and then you could buy some books. It was kind of a weird program. And some of you are not going to believe me. If you weren't around in the would collect stamps at the grocery store to buy books or cookware or whatever. I don't think grocery stores even do that anymore. But the world around us is really, like. It's really about Walt Disney's travels, but also the Disney nature films and how Disney as a company and Walt Disney as a man have explored the world around us. Get it? So this would get into things like the true life adventures and disnature, but also some of Walt's famous trips. So my favorite item in the world around us, which was actually a pretty small gallery, my favorite item was Walt's pants from his El groupo trip. And the reason this is my favorite item is because I thought it was just pretty absurd. They had this room that was dedicated to the true life adventures, Disneyature, Walt's travels. And here's a pair of pants that Walt wore in South America. I guess it's hard to bring things from around the world into this Disney exhibit and have them be relevant, but Walt's pants were there representing for Walt's travels in South America. So I got to see Walt Disney's pants. I guess it was pretty cool. It was weird, though. It was kind of weird, not going to lie. Gallery seven, though, was called innoventions. And if you are a Disney Parks fan, you probably got it right away, because if you've gone to Walt Disney World in Epcot, there was a section called innoventions. And if you were a Disney Parks fan in California, you also could have visited an innoventions in Tomorrowland. So these have significance to the parks. And this section, actually, this gallery had a lot to do with some of the things we know and love the parks for. But this whole section, this whole interventions gallery, was about the technology that Disney has developed over the years. And really, this is probably one of the best galleries to show off what they were trying to do originally with the Disney 100 exhibition. Like I said earlier, they wanted people to be able to bring multigeneration families with them. And everyone from grandma down to the youngest kids would get something out of each gallery. Some did it better than others, and this one maybe does it the best, because we had things like models of the multiplane camera, which, of course, were for early animation in the Walt Disney studios. But then there were things like the audio animatronic control panels. There was an audio animatronic hand that you could control. Just a lot of technology that Disney has used, whether it's for filmmaking, whether it's for the parks, just kind of everything technology. My favorite item, and I was super excited to see it the minute I walked into the room, was the Pixar machine. Now, the last episode I recorded with Andrew Jagodo was all about the George Lucas and Disney connection, and he was one of the ones who was instrumental in starting Pixar before it was what it is now. And I had recently, because of that, wanted to get more into Pixar and rewatched the Pixar story on Disney plus. And in that documentary, the Pixar story, they show this giant box that says Pixar on it next to a monitor, and they're like, that's the thing. That's the thing that would make the Pixar movies. That's the Pixar machine, the rendering machine. And it would take days to render even just a short couple minute scene. And in this gallery, the interventions gallery, they have one of those old gigantic Pixar machines. And it was just kind of cool to see one in person. I've seen the pictures, I've seen it in the documentary. But to see that giant box sitting on the display next to that monitor, the box was bigger than the old monitor itself. And it just made me think about how far the technology has come, even since the 90s, when they were using that box. And my laptop here that I'm recording on right now is so much tinier and probably has so much more power at this point than that Pixar machine ever did, even though it was massive and it was doing some pretty cutting edge stuff at the time. Gallery number eight is called your Disney World. And this one, your Disney world, is all about the parks, but not just the US parks, the parks around the world. I could see with this one know, especially coming off of interventions and some of the other cool things that I saw, I could see how a Disney Parks fan might be disappointed in the spread of this room. I had talked to some Disney parks fans about this exhibition earlier last year, and that was one of the things I heard, was that they wish there was more to represent the parks. And I got to say, I agree with them. After going in this room, there was like a couple of ride vehicles. There was a matterhorn bobsled, which was kind of cool. But as for, as popular as the parks are, they probably could have shown more in this gallery. I get that some of the parks exhibits or the parks items might be too big for an exhibit like this, but there was so much park stuff in Bethany Bemis's exhibit at the Smithsonian that could have fit in a room like the space that they had given this gallery, and they just didn't quite hit the mark. There wasn't enough here for Parks fans. So that's one thing I will say, is I wish there was more from the Disney parks. But I still have a favorite item from it, because I do have a favorite item from all of these galleries. So number eight, your Disney world. My favorite item was Walt's train conductor, Mickey Plush. So there's this famous picture of Walt Disney driving. Is it driving a train do you drive a train? He was, like, conducting it. Let's do that. There's this famous picture of Walt Disney conducting the train in Disneyland on the first day. And he's got this kind of plush train conductor, Mickey, that he's kind of dancing around out the window of it. And the exhibit had that actual Mickey. I know this is not as close to Walt as his pants that I saw just a few galleries. I mean, that's. You can't get much closer to someone than the pants they wore, but this one is definitely iconic, and I think it actually made me feel a little bit closer to Walt Disney and that kind of major event of opening Disneyland than something like Walt Disney's pants. So I thought this Mickey was a really cool addition to have in the your Disney World gallery. Gallery number nine was called the Wonder of Disney, which doesn't have, like, a direct Walt quote or something like that. But what I could guess is it seemed like the wonder of Disney was a nod to the wonderful world of Disney, which is the anthology show. Well, one of the many names of the anthology show, the one I grew up with, at least, the wonderful world of Disney. They said that this gallery was supposed to talk about how Disney entered our own lives and homes as Disney fans and how it was kind of our Disney. This was the gallery that I think was the one that I geeked out the most in. There were so many little things in this one that I was super excited about. This was like the one for the Disney fanatics, I'm not going to lie. It kind of looked like what I would hope to see when I go to the antique mall looking for Disney stuff. Props, merchandise, just fun stuff from the parks, from Disney branded tv, from movies, all sorts of things. It had the original Mickey Mouse plush pattern from McCall, the sewing pattern. It had Binford tools from home improvement. It had a really cool pooh for President hat from Walt Disney World when Winnie the Pooh was running for president a couple of times back in the. They even had Troy Bolton's basketball from high school musical. But my favorite item from the wonder of Disney gallery was the Dharma initiative products and rations. These were props from the tv show lost. I loved lost. I really need to rewatch that one. That's one I haven't rewatched in a while. It was just the coolest, weirdest kind of show I'd ever seen since something like Twin Peaks. It kind of hit that chord of mystery and weirdness that I love in a good weird, mystery ish show. My wife and I were such big fans when we went on our honeymoon to Hawai, we did a bunch of lost sightseeing where they filmed different scenes where things were happening in the show. The show filmed in Hawaii. So we went and saw all those things. Now, this was pre Alani. We couldn't do the Disney stuff because it didn't exist yet, but we did do all the lost things we could do in Hawaii. Those kind of things in this room, the wonder of Disney, were kind of like the last big finale. We got to see all those little artifacts from different tv shows and movies. And then you moved into the final gallery. We are just getting started. So this quote is definitely a Walt quote. It comes from a speech that Walt Disney gave during the ten centennial of Disneyland in 1965. Since the beginning, Walt always wanted Disneyland to be in a state of becoming, always changing, always adapting, always evolving. But in 1965, ten years in, he said, I just want to leave you with this thought that it's just been sort of a dress rehearsal, and we're just getting started. So if any of you start resting on your laurels, I mean, forget it, because we're just getting started. He repeated that twice. Just getting started. He wanted to show that. No, we're not going to say, okay, we did this for ten years. This is what it is. This is what it's going to be. No, we're moving forward. It's going to continue to grow and change. And really, the Disney parks, the Disney company has continued to grow and change since then. So this gallery was pretty simple, though, because it kind of wanted to leave it as an open ended ending to the experience. It was a short little film to wrap some things up, kind of like that Walt hologram theater at the beginning, but it was also kind of a hall of mirrors that was a little disorienting. I thought I was going to walk into the wall a couple of times. And then it was my favorite item, which. My favorite item. You could take your photo with a replica of the partner statue, which in Disney World and Disneyland, if you want to take a picture with the partner statue, it's kind of up and behind you, you could see Walt and Mickey kind of there. You can't get up real close to it, but this one you could get right there next to Walt or Mickey and take your picture. So that's just what I did. Me and my kids went up by Mickey, and my wife snapped our picture next to Mickey and Walt. So it was really kind of a cool way to experience the partner statue and a way to kind of end the Disney 100 exhibition before, of course, exiting into a gift shop. Yes, there's more because even though the galleries are done, the gift shop is just beginning. What kind of Disney experience would it be if we didn't exit into the gift shop? So the gift shop. Let's talk about the gift shop. I don't necessarily have a favorite thing in the gift shop. There were a lot of cool things. I do love to buy Disney stuff, and it definitely felt like an old school Disney store in that gift shop to some extent. I mean, I guess anything full of Disney stuff these days will feel like an old Disney store because we don't have them around so much anymore. But one of the things that made it felt that way is when I was talking to one of the employees, she mentioned that a lot of the people working this gift shop had previously worked at the Chicago Disney store. So that was kind of cool. One thing that I found, there was a lot of books. I love to buy Disney books. As a librarian, as a Disney fan, those are my favorite kinds of books. And it was cool to see this many Disney books in one spot. So I found two Disney books were more related to the exhibition than I had originally thought. Two of them that I also ended up getting my own copies of. But anyways, one of them was the wonderful world of coloring Disney 100 years of wonder. This one had a coloring sheet of each of the posters of the galleries of the exhibition, which is really cool. I didn't know that I had seen the coloring book at different places before, but I didn't realize it was as tied to the exhibition as it actually was. So that coloring book, I made sure to pick up a copy of that. And the other one was the story of Disney 100 Years of wonder by John Baxter and Bruce C. Steele. This is that big Disney 100 silver book that came out at the beginning of the celebration, the year of celebration. And I found out it was organized into the same ten sections as the exhibition. And it kind of reminded me of one of my other favorite Disney books, which is Disney the first hundred years by Dave Smith and Steve Clark. That's the big Red book that came out when Disney celebrated the first hundredth anniversary. Remember, they celebrated the first hundred years, the hundred years in 2001, because that would have been Walt's hundredth birthday. That's when they put that big giant sorcerer Mickey hat at the MGM studios as it was. So, yeah, this is the second time that we're celebrating 100 years of Disney. But I digress. That red book that came out with that celebration. I really loved it. That one was very chronological, but kind of gave that story of Disney. This one has a similar vibe and feel, lots of pictures, lots of anecdotes, but it moves in the order of the exhibition through those different gallery titles. Both of those would be cool books I would recommend to pick up. And I would definitely recommend if you can't get to the exhibition and you kind of wanted to get a similar experience, that book can give you a lot of the same kind of vibe and feels of this exhibition. Overall, I am super glad that Disney 100, the exhibition came to Chicago, came to my nearby city here, that I could go visit it. I wish that Disney would do more things like this. I love this sort of thing. When they're going to come to Chicago, I'm going to visit it. I know some people had different opinions about what this was or what it should be, but at the end of the day, I love when Disney does stuff like this. I love one man's dream over in Hollywood Studios. If you love one man's dream, I would definitely recommend this. You would love this. It's in that same vein. And I wish Disney would put more things like this into the parks, outside of the parks, maybe offer more accessibility to the archives for the public to come in, to the Walt Disney Archives, to the animation archives, different sorts of tour really. This experience also really made me want to see the Walt Disney Family Museum and kind of those other Disney museums around the US. But that reminds me, at the top of the show, I told you that we were going to look back at the Disney exhibition visit that my family and I did last month, and we were going to look forward to what's coming next in 2024 for Synergy loves company. So let's get on with it. My outlook for Synergy loves company in 2024 first up, I want to talk about some new things for the show. Number one, I got a new studio set up about once a year. I like to kind of refresh my podcasting studio. Each time I think I make it a little bit more show ready for maybe more video content. If you didn't know, I put some video clips sometimes up on YouTube, you could check it out there. You could also now listen to the podcast itself on YouTube, like watch a little video. Well, it's not a video. It's like the album art and listen to it at the same time. So those two things are out there. But I think I want to kind of incorporate more video as much as I can. But if you want to see what I did to my studio? Check out my instagram. You'll see some pictures. I got some pictures of some new and exciting setup and different things around my studio. Take a look at that. It's at synergylovescompany. Another thing that's new, I guess it's not necessarily new. I'll say I'm continuing it through this year is about halfway through. Last year I started doing more episodes more often. It used to be about once a month. Now it's about once every two weeks. I know I did just take a break around the holidays, but coming up soon, you're going to be hearing new episodes still about twice a month, once every two weeks, which of course, to make that happen, one of the things I love to do is bring guests on the show. So you're going to hear content from more great guests. I have some really exciting guests already lined up for the next few episodes coming soon. I'm excited for you to hear them. Some good topics, some good guests. It'll be good stuff. So more great guests in 2024. Another thing I'd like to try out in 2024. I don't know when it's going to happen. It'll be sometime within the next year. Consider it a synergy loves company. New Year's resolution is I want to expand the universe of synergy and add some more elements, like maybe a live stream here or there where we could get together. We could talk in real time, hang out, talk Disney, all sorts of cool stuff. So stay tuned. Definitely subscribe, find me on socials and you will hear about anything like that. That's up and coming. In fact, my next thing, my next New Year's resolution will say for Synergy Lev's company is to get better at social media, especially threads and Instagram. I kind of miss the old dis Twitter. It's kind of disbanded and separated and not exactly where it used to be. I feel like it's not as active as it once was. But I did find some great Disney people on threads, so definitely go and find me there. I think I'm going to make threads and Instagram kind of like my main home for social media in the new year, and I'm going to try, try to get better at those, too. So help me do that by finding me at Synergy Loves company on threads and Instagram, and we'll connect over there. But wait, that's not all of it. Another thing that I've got coming up in 2024 that will help enhance the show are some trips, some travel. Last summer I did some episodes based on my travels to New York with Disney and Times Square to DC with the episode I did with Bethany Bemis at the Smithsonian. And I'm going to continue traveling in 2024. And some of my trips are going to be very heavily Disney themed. Like for instance, this spring I'm going to Disneyland for the first time ever. I'm super excited about that. You'll definitely hear about my trip a little bit. I don't like to do a traditional trip report, so maybe we'll find something else to do. But I'll definitely tell you on a podcast episode all about my trip, my first trip to Disneyland. On that same trip, we're going to visit some other places like the Warner Brothers studio to take the Warner Brothers studio tour. I know you're probably like, well, that's not Disney. But no, there's a lot of Disney connections there. So of course I'm going to have to explore those with you later on, too. And another stop on that same trip is going to be to Las Vegas. So I'm really excited. We'll have to talk about Disney's connections to Las Vegas, too. And I have it planned to go and continue my Walt Disney the man history travels and visit both Marceline and Kansas City coming up in 2024. So all those places are going to affect some of the content that we make for this show. So you can probably guess all of those are going to show up in a future episode of Synergy Loves Company. So make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any of those or miss any sort of new information about the show coming up. So I want to thank you so much for listening to this episode of Synergy loves Company. I truly appreciate when you take your time to listen to me talk about Disney in these episodes. But I do want to hear back from you. So find me on the socials and say hi. Let me know what you think about the show. Let me know what you thought about the Disney 100 exhibition. I want to hear what you think so you can find me on Instagram and threads at synergylovescompany. And for now, I'm still on Twitter and a little bit on blue sky at Eric H. Synergy. Something new that I started talking about a few episodes ago is if you feel like you're getting value from Synergy loves company and you want to give back to the show, you want to donate and help me keep the show going, you can do that on Ko Fi if you look in the show description or go to synergylovescompany.com you'll find a link to my Ko fi page where you can give back to the show and help it keep going. Every little bit helps. It helps me do things like renovate my studio, get more things going for live streaming, for adding more video content, adding more audio content, just making more episodes of the show. So if you want to give back to help definitely check us out on Ko Fi. Another way though that you can always help the show is by sharing the show to help us grow. Share Synergy loves company with a friend who loves Disney just as much as you do. You can just tell them to visit synergylovescompany.com because sharing the show is the number one way that you can support the show and your support means the world to me. That's all for today. Thanks for exploring Disney's connections with me and until next time, keep discovering the magic in everything.