Weekly Podcast Review – NETCOT

Ed: I’d like to welcome back the podcast review feature to The Disney Blog. Daniel Ross, aka @dross6 on Twitter, is the new guest reviewer.

Welcome to the Weekly Podcast Review (name pending)! I’ll focus on a different Disney podcast each week. This week, we’ll take a look at the Netcot Podcast (#140):

Van, the host, has a semi-regular format (News->Top 7->Feature->Audio) and nothing’s different this week. We’ll start off at the beginning:

News:

Among the more interesting news topics covered: rumors that the filming of Sorcerer’s Apprentice is cursed; Disney will stop screening on-ride photographs for lewd activities on Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, and the Tower of Terror, among others, in Disneyland, but not yet WDW; and, finally, rumors are picking back up, once more, that a new film is in production for a potential Star Tours refurb.

After the news, Van breaks into the top 7 places to have breakfast in Walt Disney World:

7. Garden Grove Café-Walt Disney World Swan
6. Captain’s Grill-Yacht Club Resort
5. Chef Mickey’s-Contemporary Resort
4. Spoodles-Boardwalk Resort
3. Kona Café-Polynesian Resort
2. 1900 Park Faire-Grand Floridian
1. Boma-Animal Kingdom Lodge

For the feature this week, Van focuses on the differences (what he calls a “Compare-Van-Contrast”) between the versions of Toontown at Disneyland (the original) and Walt Disney World (which started in 1989 as Mickey’s Birthdayland).

The Magic Kingdom version includes a lot of walkthroughs (i.e. Mickey’s house, Pete’s garage, Minnie’s house, Donald’s Boat), the judge’s tent (now home to Pixie Hollow), and Goofy’s Barnstormer (made for kids, not adults).

The Disneyland version is set apart from Fantasyland by way of a dip in the walkway that separates the lands (For the WDW version, there’s not really a transition). Another difference is that in the DL version, everything is made to look like you’re in a cartoon. The walkthroughs are also present here (Mickey’s house, Minnie’s house, Chip n’ Dale’s Treehouse) as well as a coaster (Gadget’s Go-Coaster) and an attraction (Roger Rabbit’s Car-Toon Spin).

Overall, Van spends enough time to briefly compare the versions while utilizing enough detail to describe the lands to someone who hasn’t visited. However, it feels like he spends more time on the Top 7 list (a recurring segment on the show) and less on the feature for this episode. Definitely a podcast worth trying (he-Van-tends to keep the time around the half-hour mark) if not for the topic, then definitely for the in-park audio from each episode’s featured attraction (for #140, he included audio from both ToonTowns).

He also runs Netcot.com and that’s where the forums as well as the latest Disney news and interesting trivia can be found weekly.