Saturday Night Bedtime story: Randi banned from Disney’s New York.

Very often the fine, fine folks from Disney pay to have radio station’s come broadcast live from their theme parks. It’s usually as part of an advertising buy for some special thing they’re doing, and stations usually take them up on it because the whole gansa-mishpucha from the station gets to go and take part in being treated like royalty by Disney hospitality. Free food, free stays at their nicest properties, tons of free merchandise, etc. Marketing wise, they get it. They treat their media partners like gold because it’s worth the weight of that gold when the broadcasters start talking about how amazing everything is. The term “mickey mouse operation” can be used for many many organizations; the “house of the mouse” ain’t one of them.

Disney between Turkey Day and New Year’s is an especially saccharine time of year… sweet enough to cause tooth decay, what with all the decorations and happy holidays stuff going on. And it’s a great time of year to promote that stuff, so the whole station got sent up there to do their shows on Friday from their Disney Studios booth where many radio stations do their shows from a real radio studio inside the park, with double paned glass looking out at the streets filled with Disney Holiday revelers. Tons and tons of kids just in heaven, and parents loving the fact that they brought their kids to the :Happiest place in the world” at the happiest time of the year… all safe and secure in non-stop wonderment.

Between Thanksgiving and New Years, about 2 weeks after the Macy’s Day Parade, all those floats are trucked down to Orlando where they’re set up around the NEW YORK street setup in Disney’s Hollywood (now MGM) Studios. And either the Disney folks or the Sales guys had a great idea to have Randi broadcast LIVE from New York street in the middle of the park during her Saturday show from like 8a-noon. I mean, why not? New York chick on New York Street with the Macy’s Day Parade floats all around? Why NOT! What a great idea!

Neither of them had apparently ever listened to her show.

First of all.. Randi didn’t only frequently bite the hand that fed her, she shit into it afterward.

Here’s how it went down as I remember. We have to be there, set up at a table at 7:30 so we can go on the air at 8. And it’s a cold day, and the sun hasn’t cleared the faux buildings, so we’re in the shade, in 60 degree weather with a stiff 15 mph wind at 8am. And already Randi isn’t happy.

We go on the air, and … we’re the only ones there. On an empty street in the back of the Hollywood Studios thee park. “Broward! owardowardoward” Echos. The park isn’t even open for another hour, and we’re in a closed empty part of the park broadcasting live. To no one. On a saturday morning. at 8am.

And Randi starts being Randi. Comically bitching about this and that, talking to callers about how cold, and miserable, and yelling as loud as she can so you can year the echo on the air. After an hour or so, when the park eventually opened, people eventually started making their way to the back of the place… random parents pushing strollers and Randi is talking about coffee farts and Jim’s schlong and her nipples being hard from the whipping wind… and there, on the street, is the Disney Marketing folks… who aren’t happy. They apparently ever heard her show before, and the Sales guys hadn’t clued them in. They’d expected New York Randi having a warm homecoming feeling about being in New York for the Holidays, and they got Queen Kong scaring the bajeezus out of the children. So they talk to someone, who talks to someone, and they have us turn down the monitors a little so the audio isn’t so loud as to be in violation of Disney rules for crassness and obscenity.

Well, that pushed Randi over the edge. She starts looking around at all the festive decorations adorning the fake NY Skyline windows and starts complaining about how there are no menorahs in any of the goddam windows. “They got JEWS in real New York. I don’t see a one in this place”.. and that goes on for about 30 minutes. At one point she threatened to make Disney’s NY look a little more authentic by offering to take a dump on the sidewalk.

And that was that. They wanted to pull the plug on the show. I think I remember Boy Gary getting involved in some kind of angry shouting/discussion with the Disney marketing folks (i was too busy paying attention to what I had to do with the show) and the result was that there were to be NO monitors playing the show while we were live on the street. People would walk by and see a lady at a table with a headphone and mic on, but they couldn’t hear a word she said. She couldn’t talk to any passers by, only to the few callers who bothered to ring in, and she killed the time talking to me and Jim in relative radio silence within the confines of the Disney park.

Not surprisingly, the next time when Rick and Suds and Phil were invited to do shows from the Magic Kingdom, Randi was left out of the promotion.