SATURDAY SIX Presents: The 2024 Theme Park Turkeys, a Look Back at the CRAZIEST Stories of the Year!

This week’s SATURDAY SIX is an annual tradition like no other, as we proudly present the 11th Annual Theme Park Turkeys of the Year. Gather ’round as we continue the time-honored tradition of awarding six Theme Park “Turkeys” to the craziest, most outrageous, or just downright weird stories of the year, concluding with the coveted Golden Turkey award. You can see all the previous Turkey inductees by CLICKING HERE.

Before we start, let’s send a special shout out to artist Brian Cooper. The headline drawing this year was crafted by Brian and features many of the memorable moments and people that have shaped our theme park experience over the last year. There are over 30 references contained in the drawing, which you can see in glorious hi res by clicking the photo below. How many Easter Eggs can YOU identify? Don’t worry, we explain every single one in this year’s TURKEY ADDENDUM.

We are also happy to announce that artist SonderQuest is also back and is providing a exclusive “digital watercolor” for each of the six Turkeys this year! It’s always great when you can combine SonderQuest’s cute, charming and quirky style with stories that are next level bonkers.

Okay, with the pomp and circumstance out of the way, let’s kick off another year of absolute craziness with a story that brings us …

# 6 – That Time Mickey Mouse Went Into Public Domain

January 2024 started off HOT when after 95 years, the character of Mickey Mouse has fallen from the tight grasp of Disney Intellectual Property Lawyers and into the hands of public domain. This was something I didn’t think I would ever see happen because over the course of my time Disney has fought many legal battles to extend Mickey’s copyright extension. The foundation of the Walt Disney empire that we know today was built on many strong bricks; including Snow White (1939), the opening of Disneyland (1955) and Walt’s famous quote “If you can dream it, you can do it” (well, maybe not that one.)

However, years before any of that was Steamboat Willie. It is impossible to fully understand today what type of impact Steamboat Willie made on the public upon its release in 1928. One of the first ever animated cartoons to use synchronized sound with what was playing on the screen, it was also – for all intents and purposes – the debut of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, two beloved characters whose popularity with the audience continues to this very day.

Over the years, Disney has been notorious about protecting its copyright, including making legal threats to Florida preschools over painted murals that featured Disney characters. Why was Disney so protective? Well we found out once Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willie entered the public domain on January 1st. IMMEDIATELY there were brands that announced films and video games that used the character of Mickey Mouse in a not-so-Disney way, including the upcoming movie SCREAMBOAT, which will tell the tale of “a sadistic mouse who torments a group of unsuspecting ferry passengers.” When first announced, this movie was originally titled STEAMBOAT WILLIE, but was presumably changed because of a legal challenge from Disney.

A live-action horror film called MICKEY’S MOUSE TRAP was also rushed into distribution. This was later renamed THE MOUSE TRAP and was available on the Peacock streaming service for the Halloween season.

As of this writing it can be viewed on a variety of streaming services including Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, and Pluto, but with a 17% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, just know this is time in your life you won’t be getting back. Even if that time is under an hour and half (which is always a huge red flag when a movie can’t hit the 90 minute mark for run time.)

Another upcoming horror movie is named THE RETURN OF STEAMBOAT WILLIE.

After 95 years of being locked away, Willie is free and he wants his Steamboat back.

With that tagline, we’re not even sure if the people involved with this movie understand that the STEAMBOAT was named “WILLIE” and that Mickey Mouse was the captain.

A trailer was revealed for MOUSE, a first person shooter video game featuring Mickey Mouse using a variety of weapons to take out “a corrupt city of crooks and danger.”

A pizza place in Pittsburgh started using Mickey Mouse on its receipts…

A Steamboat Willie Tarot Card set was fully funded on Kickstarter.

HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, a talk show which has skewered the Walt Disney company for years (and rightfully so,) used the following graphic to tease their most recent season.

Rumors and Innuendo suggest that unscrupulous people were even using Mickey as the logo for their theme park blogs. Have they no shame?!!

Meanwhile, the Walt Disney Company is over here like…

One of my favorite weekly pieces of entertainment on the interweb is Ruben Boling’s Tom the Dancing Bug (which you can subscribe to by CLICKING HERE.) The strip released an amazing piece introducing Mickey Mouse as their newest character. It was chock-full of biting commentary on the public domain situation, including the comic strip below…

On social media, you couldn’t go anywhere without someone bringing up the situation, with some suggestion a creative mashup…

 

Now that is a great idea if I ever heard one. Even better, artist Jess Feldman brought that idea to life!

You knew that Universal’s social media team wasn’t going to let this news go without taking a lighthearted jab…

When it comes to copyright law I get it, I really do. In fact some of my favorite pieces of media were ones that re-used characters that went into public domain (such as Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book series.) It was a completely different world when copyright law was originally created. Thanks to the current “disrupter” cash grab world we live in combined with – ugh – Artificial Intelligence doing the work instead of actual creative humans, we will instead be forced to suffer through a metric ton of public domain GARBAGE in the coming years.

# 5 – That Time Disney Tried To End A Wrongful Death Lawsuit via Disney+ TOS

Over the years there have been plenty of stories that were too depressing, too offensive, or just too tragic to put into The Turkeys. This story could have easily fallen into one of those categories—except the Turkey nomination isn’t about the tragedy itself. Instead, it’s about the completely unforced error that Disney made in response.

In February, Jeffrey Piccolo filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Disney and Raglan Road restaurant after his wife suffered a fatal anaphylactic reaction to food that they were assured on multiple occasions was allergen-free. Now Disney faces thousands of lawsuits every single year, and like many companies, does what it can do to get out of them. Initially, Disney denied having any liability, alleging that it only served in a landlord capacity to Raglan Road in Disney Springs.

The courts said Nay, Nay to that argument. Now, that doesn’t mean Disney is liable – only that there wasn’t enough standing in that argument for the judge to dismiss the suit.

Once that decision was made, Disney could have decided to quickly settle and move on. A choice to do this might not admit liability, but simply be the better part of valor and all that. Or, they could have chosen to allow the suit to continue and let the jury decide. That’s not what happened either. Instead, their next legal move was pretty egregious and elevated it to a level that no one saw coming.

Disney asked the court to send the case to arbitration, claiming that Piccolo waived his rights to sue the company when he briefly signed up for a one-month Disney+ trial back in 2019. Read that last half sentence over again before picking your jaw up off the floor.

The lawyers representing Disney were not some fly-by-night legal office located in an Orlando strip mall, but instead a prestigious firm that must have taken the risk assessment and gambled that this particular defense would fly under the radar due to the sheer amount of lawsuits that Disney regularly faces. Turns out they were wrong, as reaction to this story sparked a viral backlash that went far and wide, painting Disney in a particularly bad light.

I know when a theme park related story has gone viral when all of a sudden I start getting texts and emails from my friends and family asking, “Have you seen this?!” It is almost always because of something that makes Disney or Universal look bad (with maybe the bonkers story of the Figment Popcorn Bucket back in 2022 being an exception.) This story went EVERYWHERE, and almost every article and TV segment could be boiled down to one question, “what was Disney thinking?!!”

 

This response was about as tone deaf as you can get and did not go over well. Are there merits to this particular defense? Certainly. Almost every single person reading this article has also quickly scrolled through a long Terms of Service on their TV or phone and quickly hit “I accept” without fully understanding – or even looking at – all the terms. Companies have certainly taken advantage of that fact and most likely will continue to do so for the rest of time.

However, even in the legal world, this was pushing it.

The use-case for a Disney+ streaming service TOS binding you later in a wrongful death lawsuit seems to be unconscionable. Sort of like me agreeing to the latest Elon Musk owned Twitter TOS taking away my rights if one of the Elon Musk owned Tesla RoboTaxis ran me over a year later.

Now, one reason Disney’s lawyers would want the case to go to arbitration is because one can reasonably assume that a jury – when presented with the facts of the case – might react very favorably to the Plaintiff. Juries are notoriously unpredictable, compared to arbitrators.

Like we said, Disney could have just settled this case quietly if they wanted to forego any unwanted attention. Most likely no one would have ever even heard of the case. Instead their law firm went on the offensive and it bit Disney in a major way. The public reaction was so bad that Disney’s lawyers went back into court with their tail between their legs and withdrew the argument. We even got to see Josh D’Amaro comment on the case, essentially giving a mea culpa of sorts when saying Disney would “waive their right of arbitration.”

Maybe the craziest part of this entire story is that – for the most part – Disney is and has been INCREDIBLE when it comes to allergy accommodations. I’ve traveled with many friends and family members who have had particular allergies and/or dietary restrictions and Disney has always gone above and beyond in catering to them. All that goodwill Disney has spent years building up gets erased almost overnight in the court of public opinion with this ridiculous legal argument spreading the story worldwide. When this whole case is eventually settled, I’m going to ask ace Florida reporter Gabrielle Russon what she thinks would have been the best option for Disney, because I don’t understand why they didn’t just pay the Plaintiff and then sue Raglan Road themselves to recoup the money.

# 4 – That Time Gideons Bakehouse Was Haunted By Ghosts

The transition from Downtown Disney to Disney Springs brought a lot of new dining venues to WDW, including Art Smith’s Homecomin’, The BOATHOUSE, and Morimoto Asia. However, quite possibly the biggest success is Gideon’s Bakehouse, an ultra themed bakery that regularly draws lines so long that guests need to enter a virtual queue.

The theming, both inside and out, is going to appeal to any fans of Disney’s Haunted Mansion as Gideon’s nails that eerie vibe.

The signature item at Gideon’s is their over-the-top cookies that not only taste great, they also make for perfect fodder on social media.

There are actually two Gideon’s Bakehouses in Orlando. The original is at East End Market, and generally will have a much smaller line than the venue in Disney Springs. You will often have little to no wait. HOWEVER, there are some items on the menu that are exclusive to Disney Springs, such as the absolutely incredible coffee cake cookie (that is almost worth booking a Disney vacation for!)

Gideon’s also offers three layer cake slices that taste as good as they look, and you don’t have to apply for a line of credit to order them (we’re looking in your direction Cake Bake Shop.)

In May, a Ghosts of Gideons account appeared on various social media platforms and made a viral post. It started with this…

Another section of the post included the following observation on Gideon’s management.

On DisTwitter, people were wondering what all the hubbub was about with so many mentions of Gideon’s out of nowhere. I tried to explain what was going on by using a moment from one of my all-time favorite shows, The UK version of The Office.

The social media post ended by announcing that Gideon’s Bakehouse was issued a demand letter by the Ghosts of Gideon’s, and a link was given for people to see the letter.

The demand letter was EIGHT PAGES LONG and I knew right away we were going to be getting something special when the very first word was misspelled with Giddeons. That’s immediately topped by the first lines of the demand letter that state, “There is an odor most foul in the Bakehouse. It is the stench of the fish rotting from the head.” This was already seeming less like a legal document and more like a dungeon master starting a new D&D campaign.

Here are some of my favorite selections from the 8 page letter, including a reference to The Little Mermaid.

While I admit I’m the last one who should be talking about grammar and punctuation, when even I can spot obvious typos and errors, you probably should have passed the demand letter around a couple times for some edits. Anyway, next up is an UNBELIEVABLE paragraph complaining about employees being forced to go to a meeting that could have been done by email when that is something that is so ubiquitous in the Real World that it is used for comedic effect in countless movies and television shows.

Now I’m not a fan of the phrase “The customer is always right,” but the Ghosts of Gideons go in the complete opposite direction. They suggest that management should NEVER take the side of a guest. Amazing.

Halfway through the demand letter we get a moment that is so eye-rolling and ridiculous that it actually makes the sheer offensiveness of it easier to take. The Ghosts of Gideons write that they work under SLAVE-LIKE conditions.

“C’mon Derek, everyone can make a slip up in the heat of an argument.” Sure, but the Ghosts of Gideons also compared their working conditions to “being trapped on an 1800’s plantation working for the Big House.”

Whatever guests might have been on their side throughout all this ridiculousness may have jumped ship on page 7, when the Ghosts of Gideons demand an automatic MANDATORY 7.5% tip on all orders.

Keep in mind, this particular demand was immediately after demanding a 50%+ raise. Now there is no bigger defender of tips than me (please refer back to our 2020 Never Forget article and the case of the Via Napoli server who got stiffed by a Disney “expert.”) However, I’m not sure I can sign off on mandatory tipping for self-service ordering after the guest also had to wait in a long long line just for that privilege.

How well did the demand letter go over? Well, let’s check in on the Ghosts of Gideons social media account…

We’re going to skip the absolutely insane amount of posts from the Ghosts of Gideons along with the counterpoints on social media by the actual owners of Gideon’s Bakehouse (who started one post by addressing himself as “The Fat Cat.”) This was all a bunch of next level bonkers nonsense about serious items that should have taken place behind closed doors.

I do like to think that at the next Gideon’s Bakehouse, management brought in a guest motivational speaker for the troops…

# 3 – That Time Disney Turned The Morocco Pavilion Into The Dollar Store

Back in 2020 Disney took over running the Morocco Pavilion and has made some, shall we say, interesting changes along the way. The very first thing they did was remove a phallic-shaped wall that was popular with guests for, well, reasons.

All this was done during a time when WDW wasn’t spending money on ANYTHING, but they found the money to replace the wall with a door to nowhere.

You can read more about the replacement of this fan favorite wall in our 2021 In Memoriam article.

That was a pretty big downgrade, but it turns out Disney wasn’t done just yet. Let’s check out one of the most iconic features of the Morocco Pavilion, the gorgeous ornate water fountain and nearby planters.

Inside the nearby Restaurant Marrakesh, you could find framed photos that went over why the intricate detailing in the fountains and planters was so important to the culture.

This was seriously some of the most gorgeous tile work in all of Walt Disney World that people could appreciate the beauty of while sitting on the fountain to use as a footbath.

We even got to see the famous fountain during an episode of Hulk Hogan’s Thunder in Paradise.

Back in May, theme park investigative journalist @FiBelleFi noticed that there have been some changes in Morocco, noting “The elaborate planters once handcrafted by the King of Morocco’s artisans have been dumbed down using tile which belongs on the restroom floor at DHS.”

Not long after, Disney revealed that all the tile work on the courtyard planters and fountain had been replaced. The trees in the planters – which provided much needed shade to guests during the Florida heat – were also removed.

Listen, I’m not blaming the artisans who did the tile work at the Morocco Pavilion, they were told what to do. If these very same planters and fountain were created from scratch for Pop Century, they’d be getting raves. Unfortunately, they were replacing true pieces of art that have historical and cultural significance.

# 2 – That Time Disney Opened CommuniCore Hall and Said, “Mission Accomplished.”

We all saw this coming, but still…

After seemingly countless years of construction at EPCOT, CommuniCore Hall opened up earlier this year and wasn’t exactly the cherry on top of a sundae. More like a piece of asparagus on top of a sundae, and a rotten piece of asparagus at that.

The night before its grand opening to the public, Disney hosted a media event at CommuniCore Hall that featured live music and some pretty sharp looking banners.

The next day, CommuniCore Hall opened its doors for us regular ham ‘n eggers, and it was the most sterile and lifeless place in all of Walt Disney World, which is saying something because EPCOT also has the banal Creations gift shop. It is hard to put into words just how lifeless the new CommuniCore Hall is, especially considering that it sits in the hub of EPCOT, a park that is supposed to represent a look towards a better and brighter future.

However it did inspire Your Humble Author to get out the Sharpie and do a drawing (inspired by the recent return of The Onion newspaper.)

Theme park investigative journalist Ivonne Ramos did discover a way that guests can use CommuniCore Hall to have fun…by playing solitaire.

The theme park fan community had fun with this concept, including creative genius Howard Bowers designing a great t-shirt for Ivonne.

“But, But But!!!!” came the cries of a group of Disney hardcore fans on social media, sounding like Linus describing the merits of the Great Pumpkin. “You don’t understand. CommuniCore Hall is a Flex Space. It’s only designed to be really utilized during festivals. You’ll see!”

This is embarrassing. Said it before and I’ll say it again, if it truly is a “flex space” then why can’t we FLEX IT INTO SOMETHING GOOD?!! Universal opens multiple Tribute Stores each year, every single one of them with more thought and care put into them than CommuniCore Hall and Creations gift shop combined, times 1000.

This doesn’t even make sense, because it’s such an easy fix. You can put those awesome EPCOT attraction prints up on the walls. Play background music from fan favorite attractions like Horizons,  the original Journey Into Imagination, and Soarin’. Pull a page out of One Man’s Dream or Star Wars: Launch Bay and do tributes to EPCOT Center with models of old pavilions. Do something, anything!!!!

All that said, CommuniCore Hall is just indicative of what the EPCOT of today is. Maybe not good, but “good enough,” at least in the minds of Disney management.

A case has been made – by many – that an outdoor area to just relax is something Disney needed. Putting the “park” in theme park, so to speak. Usually this case is made by a parent, explaining that kids need an area to just have fun in and burn off some energy. Valid point. My argument would be that there are ways that adults can relax and kids run around and have fun inside a theme park, and look no farther than Camp Jurassic at Islands of Adventure as an example. Kids also would have had a good time running around in the Play Pavilion, a concept that was announced for EPCOT as part of this huge expansion, which was then completely scrapped.

A t-shirt designed by our very own SonderQuest summed up most reactions to the new area…

One of the neat things we did get with the EPCOT central hub overhaul was a lighting package on the ground that is designed to resemble the classic 5 ring EPCOT Center logo. This looked spectacular from the air. These lights made their official debut in December, 2023.

The lights also popped to guests inside the park.

However, this didn’t last long. By early July the lights started having some significant issues.

A closer look reveals that there were some major problems with these strips installed onto the EPCOT pavement.

Nothing a little tape can’t fix though, right?

More recently, an obstacle course was installed to mark all the areas in a nearby area with cracked pavers.

Let the record show that we here at The Turkeys are tough but fair. It has been brought to our attention that we have some BREAKING NEWS over at EPCOT and that – for the most part – as of this week, the ground lights have been repaired.

FIRST EVER TURKEY DOUBLE BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: Turns out, the BREAKING NEWS above may have been “fools gold” as @fibellefi and Ivonne Ramos – theme park’s Woodward and Bernstein – have reported that the ground lights working may have been Limited Time Magic.

 

# 1 – That Time Jenny Nicholson Did a FOUR HOUR Video on why the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser failed…AND MILLIONS WATCHED

On May 19th, the following video was posted by Jenny Nicholson on YouTube and it was like a bomb hitting the theme park community.

On first glance, seeing a video with a run time of over FOUR HOURS would immediately make me think, “No thank you.” But word was going around that this video was worth the time investment, so I figured I would give it a shot and bail if it became too boring.

It turns out that the video was actually a master class on presentation and kept me engaged for the entire run time. The video is broken up into over a dozen segments going over various aspects of the Starcruiser (from marketing, to the actual rooms on the ship, to the cost breakdown and more) making it easy to stop and just pick up viewing at a later time if you can’t make a four hour commitment. You can also just skip sections you have no interest in. Jenny does many costume changes throughout the video, which also freshens things up for the viewer with such a lengthy time spent on one subject.

For a person like me who never actually went on the Starcruiser, there were a lot of aspects of the ship that I was seeing for the first time. For example, Jenny went in-depth on not only the “space portal” that each room had, but also the in-room TV and what was available on that. I think many people reading this don’t understand why Disney+ isn’t available for all the hotel rooms at Walt Disney World, but it is really bizarre that not only did the $5,000+ Starcruiser rooms not have Disney+, the options they had on their TV were just previews and advertisements for other things. That is BONKERS.

Throughout the video Jenny brought the receipts that will keep you entertained. For example, in the TV/space portal section she went over how it was other guests who had reported back on things you should bring with you on the Starcruiser to make your trip more enjoyable, such as a roll of Gaffer’s tape to suppress the omnipresent lights that surround the portal in your tiny room. The level of detail Jenny gets into on any subject is so thorough and devastating that as a person in the community, I’m thinking “I really hope I never get on her bad side.”

For me, one of the main selling points of the Starcruiser was the dinner show experience that guests would have on night one. This is kind of a sore subject for theme park fans, because early concept art for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge showed the dinner show in DHS (with Oga’s Cantina being more of a lounge for people to wait before the show, which explains why that place is such a clustermess in its current form.)

Anyway, back to the dinner show. Jenny’s video showed that her table was inexplicably blocked by a large pole, giving her an obstructed view of the aliens performing. It is mind blowing that the Starcruiser could have been created with something like this, but what’s even more bizarre is that this table continued to be sat with paying guests, as the picture below is from TouringPlans own Guy Selga as he was given the exact same table. Just absolutely bananas!

I grew up in New Hampshire and went to see many Boston Red Sox games at Fenway Park. Building a stadium with “sightlines” in consideration didn’t exist back in 1912, so Fenway has plenty of large poles with seats behind them blocking your view of the field. Here’s the thing though, the Red Sox sell those tickets as obstructed view and you get them at a discount. EVERYONE on the Starcruiser is paying a premium price and you have no idea what table you are getting until you are being sat for the show. Even better? Guests at that table were being gaslit by Cast Members saying it was actually a good table, when by any objective measurement it is hands down the worst.

Regardless, “The Pole” story inspired this great LEGO creation…

…and even a Halloween outfit!

In fact, Jenny’s video inspired a lot of artists, with many drawing her in some of the outfits she wore during the course of the video.

During the course of the video Jenny explained that she traveled in character as Amethia Tope, a rich socialite from the planet Coruscant who wanted to help the First Order. I’ve known several people who went onto the Starcruiser in character with elaborate backstories. While cosplaying or LARP (live action role play) isn’t my thing, I totally understood and appreciated the passion they put into these characters. It wasn’t until Jenny’s video that I discovered the Starcruiser couldn’t really handle stuff like that, and almost everyone going “in character” had to just let go of that within the first hour of the experience.

Jenny’s video also inspired @ThemeParkLore to illustrate the various floors of the Starcruiser to help put everything from Jenny’s video into context for those of us who never got a chance to be aboard the “ship.”

So why did the Starcruiser fail? There’s a saying that success has a million fathers while a failure is an orphan, but this example would almost be the opposite of that. By far the biggest problem that the Starcruiser had was its outrageous price point, but as Jenny’s video explains there are many other smaller cuts which didn’t help. From the awful marketing, to not understanding its cosplay/LARP audience, to an overreliance on scanning crates as part of your “story” and more, the Starcruiser was doomed from the start. It took a minute to get there because so many people like myself love Star Wars and will overspend on just about anything, but this was an unsustainable business model from Day One.

If you haven’t already watched the video, you should go out of your way to check it out by CLICKING HERE. You’ll know within the first 15 minutes if it’s something you want to spend time watching, and at the one hour mark I was like, “Ok, I’m all in at this point.” It’s worth making it to the very end because Jenny makes some great points about the decisions made by Disney management ended up hurting Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at the parks only to self-destruct the Starcruiser in less than two years. This is something they will talk about in business classes for years to come if there is any time left in the curriculum after explaining how Elon Musk spent $44B buying Twitter only to immediately start turning off every single advertiser and sane human being from the app.

So that’s it on the Starcruiser video right? No, because the next two weeks after the video was released became ABOUT THE VIDEO. We had various takes on what people took away from the video, such as this one from @DisneyDan which comments on a section of the video where Jenny reached out to Disney via the proper channels from her experience and was ignored and/or dismissed. Jenny then posted her experience on Twitter (and to her 340,000+ followers) only to get an immediate response and satisfaction from Disney. Granted, this is how the Real World works, but its a bad look for Disney when it is exposed to over 11 Million viewers that her Starcruiser video has to date (which is TWICE as many viewers who watch things like Game of Thrones and certainly more than any theatrical film has had this year.)

As Jenny’s video was taking off in popularity, the website ScreenRant posted a response from a former Starcruiser Cast Member which was one for the all time books. Normally I would link to stories so you can make the decision for yourself, but a click bait site like ScreenRant doesn’t get that level of courtesy and the article – which was intended to be a counterpoint to Jenny’s viral video – only served to confirm every legitimate complaint that Jenny had in the first place. Absolutely amazing in its obliviousness. I did enjoy this poster’s reaction to the article and bringing back our beloved pole reference…

Jenny’s video became such a sensation that better websites and news organizations also covered the phenomenon of a four-hour YouTube video going viral. You can’t escape it so you might as well watch it.

With everything all said and done, the Starcruiser video was nothing but an unqualified success for Jenny Nicholson. Not just getting the views, but viral attention on both social media and in The Real World. Recently she was named one of the Top 50 influencers by blooloop.

As you can imagine, Disney wasn’t particularly thrilled about the success of the Starcruiser video and tried to make a copyright claim against it, which would potentially restrict views and demonetize the video. Disney’s argument was that there was music playing in the background of marketing clips used in one section of the video. That is a level of pettiness that at least The Turkeys can respect.

So there you have it: The SATURDAY SIX Presents: The 11th Annual Theme Park Turkey of the Year Awards! See you next weekend for the latest installment of the SATURDAY SIX, where we’ll look at something fun from the world of Disney and Universal. If you enjoyed yourself, be sure to check out the THEME PARK ENJOYMENT INDEX, giving a monthly recap of all the theme park news you need to know (and a lot more you don’t need to know, but we’re gonna tell you anyway). You can also follow Your Humble Author on Twitter BlueSky (@derekburgan).

Special Thanks to The Elite Brandon Glover, Digital Maestro Scott Walker, the bio-est of all reconstructs @bioreconstruct, Captain Cruiseline Scott Sanders of the world famous Disney Cruise Line Blog, my personal protege Hunter “Elvey” Underwood, artist @SonderQuest, the mighty maven of merchandise Hedgehog’s Corner, the SAT SIX Fun Squad of Parkscope Joe and “the Dadalorian” Nick, hot shot Michael Carelli, charter member of the Universal Four @Nitro230, the permit princess Alicia Stella, master cartographer Tommy Hawkins, and Hermione Granger’s tutor Megan Stump for their invaluable assistance with this article. Absolutely no help was added by SeaWorld Influencer @SuperWeenieHtJr. The SAT SIX is inspired each week by goofballs Aengus Mackenzie and LitemAndHyde and you Potterheads will  enjoy Meg’s other blog work over at the Central Florida Slug Club.

Thanksgiving Leftovers: AKA Previous Editions of The Turkeys…

What does it take to write great blogs?”