Some crazy questions...

On her desk at work my old friend Kim had a picture of her in a pose with Michael Jackson. It was taken in the cast member entrance lounge at EPCOT. Kim was waiting for a friend to get off of work and MJ was waiting in the lounge for the park to close. No secret he was a big Disney fan and he would visit the place often, but would usually arrange access for himself after the park closed and everyone was gone.

He was also a big fan of Boardwalk and Baseball, loved the wooden Florida Hurricane coaster there, and would arrange for days at the park so he could ride it. In fact that ride, (now Arkansas Twister at Magic Springs) went by the name Michael Jackson's Thrill Coaster for a time, no doubt to capitalize on his popularity.

I don't know if he would've paid anything for these excursions. They might've just been glad to have him around, even at EPCOT and MK. In 1986 the 3D movie Captain EO made it's debut at the Journey into Imagination Pavilion at EPCOT, so there was a tie in.

All this was after Thriller hit in 1982, but certainly before B&B closed in 1990, and somewhere on the way to his becoming a complete kook.

coasterqueenTRN said:
^LOL! Just give it time. ;)

I thought a real estate company owns Neverland? If they would open it up as a "tourist attraction" along with his house I am sure people will visit. That might help pay off some of his debt. Whether the Jackson family wants to do that or not I don't know.

To be honest, I think whoever owns it now is either going to sell it or sell it back to the Jackson family. Or, they are just going to tear it down and build something else.

I just know if Priscilla hadn't opened up Graceland as a tourist attraction his estate would of went down the tubes and Lisa Marie and her kids wouldn't be set for life. That's the best business decision Priscilla ever made. I don't think Elvis was in debt like Michael but he didn't have much money in his bank account when he died.

-Tina

You brought up an interesting point? Would the Jackson family be interested in Neverland? My guess is that the answer would be no but then again who knows. One thing is certain, if the Jackson family did buy Neverland and they decide to open the estate to the public, the animals and rides wont be there.

True about Elvis not having much money in his bank acount during his later years. Another interesting thing about the death of Elvis when compared to the death of MJ...when MJ died a lot of radio stations played his music as a tribute. Many of them did the same thing with Elvis too but interesting in the case of Elvis, at the time of his death so many top 40 stations of that era did NOT have any Elvis tunes since disco/hard rock/bubblegum and Hall & Oates were big at time, so for them to play Elvis they had to go out to buy his music.even the big stations. At the time of Elvis' death one of America's biggest top forty radio stations was Buffalo, New York's WKBW-AM ( 50,000 watts reaching 20 states and all of Eastern Canada ) and as big as WKBW was, they had no Elvis in ther library so the jocks there had to hit a nearby shopping center to buy his records in order for them to air a tribute "for the king".

RCMAC,

That's a cool story about your friend meeting MJ. I remember seeing Captain EO. I loved it!

Chriscub,

That's interesting yet unbelievable that all those radio stations didn't have any Elvis albums at the time of his death. If some or all of those stations were around in the 50's and 60's you would think they would of stored his albums in a library somewhere. :)

-Tina

Yeah, Tina. We worked in a huge office and one day I was at Kim's desk and noticed the picture, and I said "is that MJ?" ... "yes" ... "cardboard, right?" ... "no" ... and she told me the story. I half recognized the room in the picture because I had a friend who worked at EPCOT and thats where I would wait to pick him up. She said he seemed like a nice guy, very forthcoming, and they had a nice little visit. I guess she caught him while the getting was still good!

You're really gonna like this one-

I have another friend who moved from Columbus to LA years ago and he was online chatting one night, and there was a guy who id'd himself as MJ. Well in a bit here comes a private message from this MJ guy who asked what he was doing. My friend said nothing, really, and invited this MJ over, (stoopid anyway, right?) who said he was glad for the invitation as he didn't really have a lot of friends. My friend thought oh no, what have I done?, then sure enough a car pulled up to the apartment building and out gets MJ and two guys. He invited MJ in, and the two guys stayed in the hall. MJ was wearing that hat that looked like something out of a french foreign legion movie, remember that one? And he left his face mostly covered. They made small talk, not much, and my friend put in a Disney movie which they watched. Close to the end MJ stood up and said "I have to go now. Thank you" and the three of them got back in the car and left. He never saw or heard from him again. So me, skeptical, asked if he was sure it was him. His reponse was, and I had to believe him, that it was so strange it just had to be!

Neverland is to close to L.A and as a tourist attraction sure would get a massive amount of visitors. It is $ to be made and sure hard to resist to go thru with it and make some easy money

Dont think we would see coasters or animals there, but they probably turn it in some sort of museum. Of course it all depends on the neighbours aswell.

Kinda doubt that people who pay millions for there estate will be happy with a constant flow of tourbusses in there backyard..

As for renting out parks, SFMM does this all the time. Usually in the offseason when the park closes at 6pm, it reopens for a private event at 7pm. It is rented either by a company or promoters who do either gradnights or the annual gayday

With money you can do basically anything, even rent your favorite coaster for ert(usually before the park opens or after closing) People do it all the time

coasterqueenTRN said:

Chriscub,

That's interesting yet unbelievable that all those radio stations didn't have any Elvis albums at the time of his death. If some or all of those stations were around in the 50's and 60's you would think they would of stored his albums in a library somewhere. :)

-Tina

Seems so strange now but back in the 70's many of those top 40 radio stations more/less stuck to current music anything old was thrown out. I knew a guy who worked at WLPL-FM in Baltimore back in the early 70s, Baltimore's first top 40 station on FM. From what I remember him telling me, once a record got to be more than 3 or 4 years old..out it went regardless who sang it. Reason being..well there was two. The kids wont listen to them and space ( Buffalo's WKBW-AM as popular as they were, the building was actually half the size of a small doctor's office ).

Of course in WLPL's case, when they threw out music, my friend would simply grab them out of the trash. Within a few years he actually had more rcords in his collection than what WLPL had in theirs.