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In this episode of the Dandy Fun House, we’re going to look ahead to the great new amusements coming in 2023 from the worlds of theme parks, pinball, toys, board games and movies! I’m also going to share my favorite episodes from 2022 and let you know what’s been going on going on behind the scenes over here and where things are headed. This is NOT a “best of / year end roundup” that most shows churn out this time of year as easy content. I’d never cheat you like that! Good stuff ahead! Let’s step into the fun house!
Neil Dandy here! 2022 has been velly velly good to me! I’m currently on sort of a holiday stay-cation if you will and enjoying a 3-day getaway to a cabin in Lynchburg, Tennessee, the home of Jack Daniels Distillery. The family and I are holed up in a cabin in single-degree weather with a stockpile of snacks, wifi and cable tv just 45 minutes from our home in Murfreesboro, and yes, Emma-Lou the Dandy Dog is here as well.
I figured what better way to wrap up the year than by bringing you a forecast of the best frivolities on the horizon for 2023, so let’s get to it!
And we’re starting with THEME PARKS!
Ok, this theme park overview is NOT going to include roller coasters! Why??? Well… everybody and their brother is opening a new roller coaster in 2023 and there’s an endless amount of coverage out there for them. It’s like most theme parks can’t think of anything else to do. I like coasters as much as the next person, but at some point it gets old. They lift you up, hurtle you down a track. Spin you, Loop you and there you go! My goal here at the Dandy Fun House is to bring you things that I think are fresh and interesting!
And it doesn’t get much more fresh and interesting than…
Katmandu Park, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic who is going to hold the distinction as the Caribbean’s very first top-class theme park. This park will be centered around the characters of the Katmandu Fantastical Universe. This park will only be available to guests staying at the all-new Falcon’s Resort and tickets are included with your guest reservation. So if you find yourself planning a trip to the Dominican, this might be something to fit into your travel plans!
Busch Gardens, Tampa Bay, Florida – Serengeti Flyer: A high-velocity screaming swing ride that takes you 135 feet high at speeds of 68 miles per hour! The promotional picture looks as if it carries about ten people at a time! Ok, that’s not exactly something ground-breaking, but at least it’s not a roller coaster.
Meanwhile… Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia is permanently closing their Mach Tower, the massive drop tower which has been plagued with constant maintenance issues since its opening in 2011. In fact, the only thing that was ever newsworthy about the Mach Tower would be the rare occasions when it was actually open and operational! Good riddance Mach Tower!
Universal Studios, Florida – Villain-Con Minion Blast: This will be a motion-based pathway attraction where you get to compete to become a member of Despicable ME’s Vicious 6! Now THAT sounds like fun!
Universal Studios, Hollywood is getting a new augmented reality ride for Mario Kart called Bowser’s Challenge. I love augmented reality rides when they’re done well and Universal does them well. One I really love is Spider Man at Universal’s Islands of Adventure. It really makes you feel like you’re right in the middle of all the action. It’s amazing what they can do with this stuff.
Universal Studios Singapore – Opening of Minion Park, a Despicable Me themed land.
Let’s move on to…
PINBALL
Coming in 2023 I have a nice list of “rumored releases and I’ve whittled it mostly down to the ones that aren’t just new releases of themes that are already out there. These are ones I uncovered that truly seem exciting to me and I hope you feel the same!
STERN: Foo Fighters, He-Man, Venom and Cobra-Kai! I’m a little surprised that the Foo Fighters haven’t had their own pinball machine yet. Kudos to Dave Grohl, Pat Smear and the boys!
JERSEY JACK PINBALL: Elton John, Van Halen, Journey and Billy Joel. I’m fairly certain that Van Halen and Journey have already had pinball machines in the past. Not so sure about Elton John and Billy Joel. Those seem real interesting. I guess Jersey Jack Pinball Manufacturer must have a thing for dad rock. That’s ok. So do I.
AMERICAN PINBALL: Galactic Tank Force, Wrath of Olympus and Robin Hood all rumored for 2023.
SPOOKY PINBALL: Scooby Doo and Evil Dead. I guess Halloween must be their thing over at Spooky Pinball.
CHICAGO GAMING COMPANY: Pulp Fiction. I wonder if the launcher will be a giant adrenaline needle?
HAGGIS PINBALL: War of The Worlds, Centaur, Medusa. It’s interesting how these different manufacturers seem to have their unique pocket of interests.
And rounding out our 2023 forecast for the world of pinball and segueing us nicely into our next segment, there is actually a movie called “PINBALL: The Man Who Saved The Game“ being released on St. Patrick’s Day! It’s about one man’s fight in New York to legalize the game which was outlawed as illegal gambling from the 1940’s through the mid-1970’s! I never knew pinball was outlawed!
And of course that segues us into…
MOVIES
In addition to the aforementioned movie, PINBALL, other movies I’m looking forward to in 2023 would include:
THE FLASH – Of course this is about the classic comic book character. While I’m a little burned out on the whole superhero thing, The FLASH was one of my favorites as a kid and I’m glad to see him getting his own movie. I’ll be there with my refillable popcorn bucket in hand!
DUNE: Part Two – I’m generally not one to get crazy over sequels, but part one left me wanting more, especially since we only got about 5 minutes of Zendaya! The original DUNE movie starring Sting bored me to tears when I was a kid. Maybe it was my age and short attention span, but I actually liked the remake and I’m ready for more! Bring it on!
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM – It’s the freaking Ninja Turtles! What more do you need to know!? This may be one of those rare times that I’ll buy pizza at a movie.
BARBIE – All I know is this is going to be a comedy starring Margot Robbie, Will Ferrell and Ryan Gosling. As long as Margot Robbie doesn’t do that annoying Harley Quinn voice, I don’t see how this movie could possibly go wrong. I can’t wait!
WONKA – This will be a prequel about how a young Willy Wonka met and enslaved a race of people known as the Oompa-Loompas! I’m sure it’s not framed that way, but come on! I think this one could go either way. We’ve already seen how bad a Willy Wonka movie can be. Johnny Depp and Tim Burton’s re-interpretation of the original was an unmitigated creepy disaster. I just really hope they get this one right. I’m not expecting it to reach the level of the original. I don’t see how anything possibly could, but please just don’t torch my childhood memories to the ground. That’s all I’m asking here!
CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET – This promises to be the sequel you weren’t sure you wanted but you’re apparently getting anyway!
and lastly but not leastly…
SUPER MARIO BROTHERS Starring Chris Pratt. No synopsis here. Let’s just marinate on that thought for a moment. Super Mario Brothers starring Chris Pratt…
TOYS!
Not much new under the sun. Most of the toys in the outlook for 2023 are mainly just variations on existing themes. But some of the more interesting things I was able to find included 3D Printers for Kids, Child-Sized Robot Playmates and Robotic Dinosaurs you can actually ride. I’m not sure if I’m excited, disturbed or a little of both. I suspect more than a few parents will start sleeping with one eye open in the new year.
And this brings us to…
BOARD GAMES coming in 2023!
PANDEMIC LEGACY – Players compete to stop the spread of deadly diseases. Oh how fun!
CODENAMES – This is going to be a card game where players form teams and collect clues through the cards to try and guess the other team’s code names while trying to avoid assassins! Sounds very espionagey!
BETRAYAL AT HOUSE ON THE HILL – Players explore a haunted house together, but at some point, one of the players becomes co-opted and joins with the forces of darkness while everyone else tries to conquer their former ally! Sounds like some friendships I had in 2022!
WINGSPAN – This is a unique one where players are bird enthisiasts and try to acquire new fowl for their aviary habitats. Different bird acquisitions gain you different abilities. I guess you try to gain a monopoly over the industry of bird-trading? Who the heck came up with this one? I’m trying to picture the brain-storming session. And… I can’t. I just can’t. But heck, I’d give it a go!
DANDY FUN HOUSE YEAR END WRAP-UP FOR 2022!
Being that the Dandy Fun House is a fairly new venture, just 2 years old at this point and also just being a monthly release (it’s monthly because that’s all I can do without it taking over too much of my life and keeping it where I enjoy producing this without risking burn out), 2022 proved to be a great year of gaining clarity in establishing and better-defining exactly what the Dandy Fun House is, how I want to present it and where it’s going.
This past year, I was able to uncover the bombshell news that had been lightly percolating behind the scenes in industry circles, but hadn’t been announced to the world yet. I’m speaking about the expected return of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in 2023! You may recall about 6 years ago, Ringling took the big top down amidst animal rights activists getting up in arms and dwindling attendance. I’ll be interested to see what they come up with for the revamp. Hopefully they’ll modernize some things and bring the circus up to date. I just hope they don’t try to be Cirque Du Soliel and they’ll go for more of a Monster Jam vibe and make something very thrilling and in-your-face. I’m afraid the age of clowns and squirting flowers may have come and gone. We’ll see.
My Dog Emma-Lou hosted episode 17 to tell you all about the Top Ten Dog Friendly Attractions in America. That one ended up being the worst-performing episode of the year by far unfortunately and I think it’s because I had to revise it and remove a destination from the list that turned out, despite many reports to the contrary to not allow dogs at all. I think the algorithms of the interwebds didn’t like the revision and it suffered in the search results as a result. But I still love the fact that I was able to have Emma the Dandy Dog as a guest host and also feature her in our last episode for the game SOGGY DOGGY where I do actually give Emma-Lou a bath right before unboxing, assembling and reviewing the board game! Check it out if you get a chance. We had a lot of fun making that one!
And speaking of guest-hosts, The Dandy Fun House was very honored to have the legendary COUNT DRAHOON of Count Drahoon’s Feature of Fright Podcast guest-host our Halloween episode in October and judge the ultimate classic Monster Cereal Showdown. Even though he relocated to California, he found himself briefly back in Tennessee to collect a few remaining items and so graciously carved out a few hours from his schedule to help shoot my most ambitiously-produced episode to date!
The best performing episodes of 2022 turned out to be my unboxing, assembly and review of games like Mouse Trap and Soggy Doggy. I don’t know why, but apparently you guys seem to like those types of videos the best. The run-and-gun, low-production quality episodes rather than the more highly-produced green screen ones! I’m still going to make ambitious productions though because I like the challenge and they make me a better content-creator but I have certainly taken note. You have spoken and I am hearing you!
A lot of this past year has also been spent strengthening the underlying infrastructure of not just the show itself, but the internet platform it’s built on.
The hosting of the podcast version of the show was migrated from Libsyn to Blubrry in early 2022 because Blubrry’s culture is much more in line with what I’m all about which is building my house on my own infrastruture as opposed to what amounts to rented land.
Basically, with Blubrry I provide them my own rss feed address which I do indeed own and which is the web address that makes the podcast subscription work. This is the web address the different podcast applications look for to find your show. I wanted that to be MY address instead of one that was assigned to me by a hosting platform. Reason being that when and if the day comes that I leave that podcasting platform, I don’t want someone else having sway over my show’s internet address. And although Libsyn says that you can take it with you when you go, I just really don’t like that. Someone could come along, change that policy in the future and hold my show hostage. That’s definitely a situation I would like to avoid!
I’ve also been undergoing a very painful web hosting transition from GoDaddy to my new web host, A2 who have been absolutely wonderful. Go Daddy apparently thought it to be a good idea over this past year to force all their customers who have email associated with their websites to migrate the handling of their email to Microsoft Exchange. And they only gave us 2 weeks notice!
In my case, this wreaked all sorts of havoc on the wedding DJ business I have had for almost 20 years because I use the Google suite of products like Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive to run almost every aspect of that business. I use gmail labels to organize the communications for each individual event, and Google Drive for all the various documents, contracts, venue policy pages, insurance forms, timelines, etc. I keep a unique Google Drive folder for each and every event. When something comes to me via email with a document attached that’s important for the event, I can just click on the document and send it straight over to it’s folder in Google Drive and then just send that email to go live under the special gmail label created exclusively for that event.
To make a long and painful story shorter, Microsoft doesn’t play nice with any of this stuff and I can’t conduct my business workflow in the way I’ve built (perfect example of buildong one’s house on rented land but when it comes to things like email and cloud storage, all you really can do is build on rented land unless you want your own home-baked bank of servers and that’s just not the business I’m in). As a result, Go Daddy rudely threw a very large wrench into pretty much every way I manage my business workflow with very short notice and screwed me up big time. What’s worse is they really don’t seem to care either. They’re the biggest player on the block and think they can do just about anything they feel like and cram whatever they want down their customers’ throats and we’ll just take it as if we don’t have alternatives. It smacks of the way AT&T still acts today as if they’re Ma Bell! Ok, sorry for the rant. I’ll move on…
My new web host, A2 have provided excellent customer service and have made the transition as painless as possible. I have several websites and bringing over the Dandy Fun House was the most complicated part by far and fortunately the downtime turned out to be minimal. Thanks A2, your hands-on customer service has been much appreciated!
Ok, that’s going to do it over here for the year! Thank you so much for h
anging out and having a frivolous 2022 with me! I look forward to new and exciting adventures with you all in 2023. So come back next month to kick the year off right here a the Dandy Fun House where everything is always FUN AND DANDY!
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