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Speaker 1 I've had six espresso to get me through this.

Speaker 3 I'm coming down off my espresso's.

Speaker 2 I need more espresso.

Speaker 3 But I went up on the Azempic this week and I had a spray ton and I've got new teeth done for you.

Speaker 4 No, no, no, no, I've got the gloves.

Speaker 2 I've got the gloves to do, so you know, got to get it all in

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Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, cats and kittens. Welcome back to the commercial break.
I'm Brian Green. This is the Rory to my Tiger, Chris and Joy Only.
Best to you, Chris. Best to you, Brian.

Speaker 2 Best to you out there in the podcast universe. Thanks for joining us.
Hopefully, we've survived Snow Apocalypse. Hopefully, fingers crossed, we've survived.

Speaker 2 The Rory McElroy Tiger Woods Golf League has debuted, Courtesy,

Speaker 2 as we were just looking at. The TGL League, which is a technology-infused golf league, I think is actually what it's called.
Technology-infused golf league. There you go.
The TGL.

Speaker 2 Which basically is like they're in a golf simulator on a big green that's put in the middle of an arena, and then they play as teams.

Speaker 2 So, you know, Tiger's got a team, and Rory's got a team, and Shane Lowry has a team, and other people have teams. And they're trying to jazz it up a little bit.
I think

Speaker 2 they're trying to make golf a little little bit more fun to watch, to play.

Speaker 2 I just watched this very long video over the break about how top golf, bought by Callaway Golf a number of years ago, has really suffered in general, top golf.

Speaker 2 Because Callaway bought it, hoping that people would then get interested in the sport of golf, go play.

Speaker 2 golf and buy their clubs. But Callaway didn't think that all the way through because top top golf is a game.
Yeah. It's a game.
It's like a little, it's like going to bowling with your friends. Right.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't know, going to the roller rink or ice skating. You do it once or twice a year.
Yeah. You have some fun.

Speaker 2 It's extremely expensive. You know, you play some games, you have fun.
Everybody has seen the videos of the girls in short skirts hitting it a mile.

Speaker 2 That has made top golf very popular because it's very popular on social media. Top golf is.

Speaker 2 So Callaway, the biggest, largest golf company in the world, decided they were going to get in on the action and buy top golf.

Speaker 2 So they purchased top golf, hoping that this would somehow lead to club sales, and it has not led to club sales because golf continues to be generally a white-rich sport.

Speaker 2 It's very costs a lot of money. It costs a lot of money to play golf.
Yeah, I mean, buy a set of Callaway clubs could cost you $1,000 if you went in that direction.

Speaker 2 Sure, you could buy some for $350,000, but you're not going to get the best clubs in the world. And I guess if you're not the best player in the world, you don't need the best clubs in the world.

Speaker 2 But it just to play around a golf is $100.

Speaker 2 I used to love to go out and play golf. I would do it once or twice a week with my brothers.
But then I had kids and I got poor. And

Speaker 2 now I don't play golf as much or at all, really. I might play once a year, maybe twice a year, because it's just not a great use of my time or money.
I'm never going to be a professional golfer.

Speaker 2 I realized that a long time ago.

Speaker 2 I do have fun when I go out and I golf, but it takes up five or six hours of your day.

Speaker 2 You're spending a couple of hundred dollars. You feel sunbaked and tired after you're done.
And all I really get for it is one good shot around.

Speaker 2 Now, as they say about golf, it's that one good shot that keeps you coming back. Because then you think you're Tiger Woods and you figured it out.
You put it all together.

Speaker 2 You're going to shoot a segment. It's that one win at the slot machine.
That's it. You're right about that.
It's something in our brains tells us that we've hit on something. There's some magic.

Speaker 2 We have become magical in some way. We have become lucky in some way.
We've become talented in some way. It was always there.
I just needed to dig it out.

Speaker 2 If I just took a couple more shots, then clearly I can get that 68 round I've been looking for, and I'll be on my way to the tour. But that's never going to happen.

Speaker 2 I'm way too old for that, first of all. Second of all, way too lazy for that.
I can't put in the reps. Put in the reps.
I'm lucky I get two episodes a day in here.

Speaker 2 I mean, I can't put in hours and hours of golf. I still know some people who think they might be professional golfers someday.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 And they spend a ton of money in the constant pursuit of betterment of golf. So to make golf a little bit more accessible, a little bit more fun, a little bit shorter, a little bit more,

Speaker 2 you know, I guess something that you would do on a more frequent basis is not a bad idea. Golf is a fun sport.
And if you know how to swing a club, it's even more fun.

Speaker 2 Like, if you can actually hit the ball, then it's even more fun. Yes, that's true.
So I think Tigers is awesome. That's why I drive the golf cart.

Speaker 2 Is that what you do with Jack? I used to drink beer. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Have you actually swung golf clubs? Yeah. You did.
Didn't you and I

Speaker 2 did? Yeah, yeah, no, I have. We used to go to that short course, remember? Over there, Cross Creek? The executive course.

Speaker 2 The executive course, which meant duck poop course that's what that really meant it was duck shit all over the course and they had the bar where you played keynote yes

Speaker 2 for a hot minute the cross creek golf course bar became my scene i know

Speaker 2 Well, Kimmy lived there too. Kimmy lived there.
But when I was married, too, to Julia, we would pop ourselves at the end of that bar on occasion.

Speaker 2 And I'm telling you what, for a executive course, apartment,

Speaker 2 like it was an apartment complex. Apart complex, yeah, condo town complex.
Yeah, apartment condo complex. You know, you could rent them or buy them or whatever.
It was old.

Speaker 2 It was built back in the 60s. It was not, but it's in this beautiful part of Atlanta in Buckhead.

Speaker 2 And despite the land being incredibly valuable, they managed to keep that shitty golf course going forever. And it's 18 holes.
And none of them are longer than 100 yards.

Speaker 2 So you can take a pitching wedge and a putter out there, and you can just play for a couple of hours. They let you drink.
They let you do whatever. There's no golf carts.
You just walk around.

Speaker 2 You can pick.

Speaker 2 And if you only have a putter and a wedge with you, you just bring the putter, the wedge, and a six-pack. That's what you do.
And that's what we did a lot. I brought Chrissy out there.

Speaker 2 Rachel and I went a number of times. So you go out there and you dump around for a couple of hours.
And then in the clubhouse, which is like this, something straight out of the 70s,

Speaker 2 they have a restaurant that you can eat at, unbelievably. And then they have a bar.
And the bar is probably, I don't know, 100 feet by 100 feet.

Speaker 2 It's not a particularly large place, but it overlooks the golf course.

Speaker 2 And people play Keno, yeah, you play Kino there.

Speaker 2 That's the only thing that people seem Keno and old alcoholics. That's what you would find at Cross Creek Bar.
Oh, there were some regulars. Oh, man, did we have fun sometimes?

Speaker 2 You could go up there in the middle of the night and get a couple of beers. It was entertaining.
It was entertaining.

Speaker 2 You're looking for the over 70 crowd and where they're having fun, it's at the Cross Creek Bar.

Speaker 6 What's Keno?

Speaker 2 Keno is a

Speaker 2 game from the Georgia Lottery, and they play it. They put it in bars.
So you get a sheet, and you pick your numbers, and you give it to the bartender, and they run it through a computer.

Speaker 2 It's like a little gambling thing. And then they have a screen dedicated to these balls just dropping like electronic, like, you know, animated balls dropping on the screen with these five numbers.

Speaker 2 And if you get one number, you win a dollar. And if you get two, you win 10.
And if you get all five, you could win, you know, $50,000 or something like that. But no one ever gets it.

Speaker 2 No one ever gets all five. But that doesn't stop some of those drunks from trying all night long.
Oh, yeah. The amount of money that Plusman Place must make on that keynote, I swear to God.

Speaker 2 You didn't win on the course, so maybe you can win at the bar. No, that's right.
But anyway, you dump around.

Speaker 2 That's making golf more fun and accessible. Believe it or not, Cross Creek was making golf more fun and accessible.

Speaker 2 If you could wade through the golf shit and the sandy greens, then you managed to have a good time in like an hour and a half, and you could just sit there and get drunk with your friends and head to the bar afterwards.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like a beautiful spring day. Yeah, or

Speaker 2 a cold winter day that was opened, you know, it was open year-round.

Speaker 2 What is not fun to most people is six hours, 18 holes, $300,

Speaker 2 where you're really struggling just to get the ball to the green. I mean,

Speaker 2 it's a highly frustrating exercise. So by putting in place kind of a more fun version of this, I can understand how and why this might be attractive to some people.

Speaker 2 Essentially taking top golf and putting it on television with people who can actually hit the ball.

Speaker 2 And it was on ESPN. I was like, where in the world was this debut on? It was on ESPN.
And so I guess ESPN's got the rights to do the TGL Tiger Woods League.

Speaker 2 Now, Tiger Woods, we went to Putt Shack recently.

Speaker 2 Last time Gustavo was in town, we went to Putt Shack. That was a lot of fun.
I love a little putt-putt. You and I went to another putt-putt that time.
Remember the one out in Gwinnett?

Speaker 2 It was like the ship. Yes.
That was so fun. Yes.
And we were hammered.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. We were out there with the Russian girl and Rachel, I think.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do remember that.
Oh, man, that was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 But Putt Jag is indoor. Yes.
And they have four or five courses in this huge facility. And then they have a bar and a restaurant.
And you go there and you play games, essentially. You can play games.

Speaker 2 They have screens and you can play games. You know, it could be who gets there the fastest or who hits the closest or whatever it is.

Speaker 2 And they have little microchips in the ball, just like a top golf, so it can know exactly where your ball is and who's hitting whose ball.

Speaker 2 So, you know, they've kind of like, I don't know, like commoditized golfing, so to speak. They've vagased it up so that you can play these games of chance and games of skill and still have fun.

Speaker 2 So I don't argue it. I still do like the old traditional kind of, you know, I like the Masters.
I'm sorry, I like the Masters. I like to watch the Masters.
I like that tradition.

Speaker 2 I like to sit on the couch four days straight, drink myself silly.

Speaker 2 Pretend like I know which direction the ball is going to go because of the wind. That's a lot of fun.
I've been to a couple of those golfing events. Me too.
What's the one? It's at the open?

Speaker 2 What's the one that ends at everything in Georgia?

Speaker 2 Oh, the FedEx Cup.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I've been to the FedEx Cup a number of times. That's a lot of fun.
I've been to the Masters a couple of times. I've been very lucky enough to be at the Masters.

Speaker 2 My ex-wife had tickets because whatever, you know, and so I went a number of years. I remember one year I took our boss from Clear Channel

Speaker 2 to the Masters, and that was the most interesting seven hours of my life. I'm sure.
Imagine that guy and imagine a two and a half hour drive there and a two and a half hour drive back.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was a riot. Yeah, that in my Honda Accord.

Speaker 2 In my Honda Accord. Yeah, it was, anyway, whatever.
You know, it was a

Speaker 2 it did. It rose me right up the corporate ladder and right out the street.
Right out the door. Yeah, right off the roof.
I climbed the corporate ladder, I shot out the roof, back onto the street.

Speaker 2 Put that on my gravestone.

Speaker 2 Make sure to get that one on my gravestone, too.

Speaker 2 Anyway, so, you know, there you go. Watch the

Speaker 2 Tiger Woods Golf League, I guess, is going to be the new thing we're all paying attention to. It was well received.

Speaker 2 I read a review about it, and someone said it was a lot of fun to watch, that the music was loud, the facility was big, the technology was fantastic, and it was entertaining that they had a lot of fun watching it.

Speaker 2 Okay, I'll give it a shot. Yeah, and in about two hours long, two and a half hours long, it clocked in well under the six hours it usually takes someone to finish a round of golf.

Speaker 2 I mean, you can get it done in four hours, but let's be honest about it. Have you ever sat on a Sunday afternoon and felt like this could go longer and I'd enjoy it? No, I mean,

Speaker 2 even someone who loves golf or loved golf for a long time on television, I mean, I had a friend, Ted, and he would, every time I'd be watching golf, he's like, I don't understand it.

Speaker 2 I don't understand how you enjoy watching a ball fly through the air with no context whatsoever as to where it's going. And that going on for six hours.
And I was like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 When I was a kid, I used to take a nap to it, just like my dad did.

Speaker 2 It was just one of those things. It was always on in the background, Saturdays and Sundays.
And I kind of got hooked on that Saturday, Sunday laziness. There's something slow.

Speaker 2 You can go to sleep at 2 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon

Speaker 2 and, you know, Rory's back, you know, minus six and whoever's minus seven. And you can wake up four hours later, and they're three holes, and you've only missed three holes.
I know.

Speaker 2 Well, the announcers can be funny, too. Oh, yeah, they're a laugh a minute.
I don't even know who the announcers are anymore. All those guys that I knew left.

Speaker 2 They're all gone. I'm just getting it.
I'm getting to be old. I'm getting to the point where I remember the old golf announcer.
I'm like my dad. I remember the old golf announced.

Speaker 2 Their old golf announcers were better. Oh, sure.
Of course. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So anyway, we'll tune into the TGL and I'll give you, I'll give you, it's on tonight, I think. So I'll give you an idea of what happens.
We were also reviewing what in the world Better Man is.

Speaker 2 It won a Golden Globe for something, best something or other.

Speaker 2 And we had no idea what that movie was until we started researching it here in the studio and figured out that Better Man is the story, life story of Robbie Williams, the very famous pop artist from the UK.

Speaker 2 And they made his character into a monkey, reportedly because they felt like

Speaker 2 the old musical biography genre was getting old and stale, and they needed to spice it up a little bit. So they felt like they wanted to.
And he felt like a monkey sometimes. Yeah, he felt like a

Speaker 2 dancing monkey. And so that's kind of its iteration.
I have still zero desire to see that movie, even after people are saying it's really good. Zero desire to see Robbie Williams as a dancing monkey.

Speaker 2 But to Christina's dismay, Chrissy and I have no idea what one Robbie Williams song is. Oh, you do? Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 Well, no, I know who he is now because I was talking to Christina about there was a whole documentary. I think it was five parts, six parts, something like that, about his life.

Speaker 2 That's how I learned about him, but I did not know about him before.

Speaker 6 He's a big deal. He's crazy to me.

Speaker 2 I was like, Robbie Williams, household name. We didn't grow up in the UK.

Speaker 2 Neither did I.

Speaker 2 But your mom did. Your mom did.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and it makes more sense as to why, you know, I haven't seen what a a Christmas story, but I know who Robbie Williams is.

Speaker 2 Exactly. Now, when I see Robbie Williams' face, I know who he is, and I know I've listened to his music because I know I've seen his videos before.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I don't feel any affinity toward it. Obviously, he's not like an artist that I follow.
But I didn't know he was famous enough to have a biography made about it. But then there you go.
Maybe

Speaker 2 I guess

Speaker 2 if you turn somebody into a monkey, I guess anything can be good. You know what I'm saying? You know, they say never work with kids or monkeys.
That's the old adage in Hollywood.

Speaker 2 Maybe we're turning a corner on monkeys, Chrissy.

Speaker 2 After Chimp Crazy, maybe we're.

Speaker 2 What is that? Chimp King? Crazy. Chimp Crazy.
Oh, yeah, that's what I'm saying. After that show.
That was crazy.

Speaker 2 That was a crazy documentary. Not as crazy as Lion

Speaker 2 King.

Speaker 2 Tiger King. Not as crazy as Tiger King.
Yeah. Not as crazy as the Lion King.
Or the Lion King.

Speaker 2 Or

Speaker 2 the Lion King sequel or prequel, which is making billions of dollars at the box office.

Speaker 2 And I somehow still, I also have no, I think, I don't think I have any desire to see CGI animated animals doing anything at all.

Speaker 2 I feel so

Speaker 2 angry with Disney. Angry.
I do, that they have taken an entire

Speaker 2 category of films that I loved so much as a child or that I watched and I liked, and they've changed it into this CGI CJI bullshit. I just, I don't know.
I don't like it.

Speaker 2 I don't think it, it doesn't hit me the same way. I'd rather watch the old animation, to be honest with you.
I guess I'd, look at me. I'm officially an old man on this episode of the commercial break.

Speaker 2 I don't know who Robbie Williams is. I hate the new golf.
I remember the old broadcasters, and now I don't like the way the newfangled animation is. I hate it.
Newfangled.

Speaker 2 The newfangled animation really gets me. It's too much.
My eyes can't keep up. They're old eyes.

Speaker 2 I just wish Disney would do like an actually animated film again, like a film that's animated, you know, something that they actually people draw.

Speaker 2 You know, think about all those animators out there that were so talented that worked for Disney and creating all those things.

Speaker 2 And now they just, you know, film a lion out in the wild and then make it do hippity-hobbity tricks.

Speaker 2 You know, now they're dabbing.

Speaker 2 The lions are dabbing CGI. Do I give a fuck? No, I don't.
I'm too old for that.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 but I will say this. I do appreciate, and you know, my kids don't like the CGI animated movies either, like the Jungle Book.

Speaker 2 No, they didn't like the Jungle Book, which was, have you seen the animated jungle book? The animated jungle book, I know Jon Favreau put his heart into that, but I'm sorry, it's terrible.

Speaker 2 I didn't like it. And they just don't like those, like those CGI animated films.
They still like the cartoon animated films, like Lilo and Stitch and, you know, Little Mermaid, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 Those are the ones.

Speaker 2 So I don't know who is buying two billion dollars worth of tickets to see this brand new prequel of Disney's that's that's animated like this I don't know there's a point where it goes too far and you just need to say to yourself do I need to spend $36.50 per ticket to watch Simba as an animated little dude falling off a waterfall that's scary for children when they're animated There's suppliability in the world.

Speaker 2 You can say to yourself or you can say to your children, it's not real. It's a a cartoon.

Speaker 2 But some of my children are already having a hard time understanding the difference between cartoons and reality TV. You know, they're like, is this live? Is this real? Does this happen like this?

Speaker 2 So when an actual lion, or it looks like an actual lion, is falling off a waterfall and dying or getting hurt. I have a,

Speaker 2 how in the world am I going to explain this? And who are these parents who are sending their children to watch real animals get hurt? I don't know. Terrible.

Speaker 2 You've got a different perspective, I think. You're all terrible parents.

Speaker 2 You're terrible parents.

Speaker 2 You should be ashamed of yourself. You should watch golf the old way.

Speaker 2 You should know who Elton John is before Robbie Williams. And you should watch the old Lion King where you can explain to your kids the blood is just someone drawing on a piece of paper,

Speaker 2 not an AI simulator. All right, did I sound old enough in that segment? Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 All right, now that I sounded old enough in that segment, let me tell you, let me sound even older in the next segment as we talk about my trip to the greatest. Oh, I'm so excited.

Speaker 2 All right, we'll be back.

Speaker 6 It's a new year and a new me, which means I'm bringing you the exact same information I always do.

Speaker 6 So follow us on Instagram at thecommercial break and on TikTok at TCB Podcast. Do something new this year.
Text us or call us and leave us a voicemail at 212-433-3 TCB.

Speaker 6 And go, please go watch our YouTube videos at youtube.com slash the commercial break. I mean, we put all of this effort into our studio, so just go take a gander.

Speaker 2 You're gonna love it.

Speaker 6 And finally, go to our website, tcbpodcast.com, if you can't be bothered with anything else, because everything we have is right there on that site.

Speaker 2 Bye.

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Speaker 7 This is Free Range with Von Miller, the podcast where I step outside the lines and I take you with me.

Speaker 7 Each week, we're talking everything from the biggest stories around the league to the biggest stories off the field. This isn't your average sports podcast.

Speaker 7 This is game meets culture, locker room meets living room, and no topic is off limits.

Speaker 7 So if you're into good conversations that ruffle a few feathers, join me every Wednesday and follow Free Range with Von Miller everywhere you get your podcast.

Speaker 1 This episode is sponsored in part by Rula. You know, there was a time when I really needed therapy, but I could not find a therapist who took my insurance.

Speaker 1 I can remember feeling so stuck like I had to choose between getting help and staying on budget. That's why I think what Rula is doing is so very important.

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Speaker 1 You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I go for the old double thumb typing. The old black thing.

Speaker 2 Now that we're talking about how old I am. Yeah, keep it going.
We're talking about how I still use two fingers to type. And Chrissy just, Chrissy,

Speaker 2 who just figured out what Instagram was in 2024, can do all the swipe of the newfangled Apple iPhone swiping to complete her sentences. My fingers are so fat, it won't do that.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, you should hear Astrid often complains that she can hear me typing in the next room because I'm like, click, clack, clack, clack, click, clack, clack, clack, click, clack.

Speaker 2 I'm beating it like it owes me money. Like, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, click.
I know

Speaker 2 on the plastic. Yes.

Speaker 2 All right, so over the weekend,

Speaker 2 you had an exciting adventure. Gustavo and LA are here, and one of the kids has a birthday coming up.

Speaker 2 And so Astrid came to me a couple of weeks ago, and she said, What if as a surprise we take the kids on a little vacation? And I said, Yeah, it sounds like a great idea.

Speaker 2 Let's get, you know, the kids are off for three weeks. Let's get them out there and do something that keeps them occupied for a day or two.

Speaker 2 And we bantered around a lot of ideas. And all of those ideas we decided not to do because this show doesn't make any money, so we can't afford it.

Speaker 2 So we were like, you know, down to Florida, nah, that's too expensive. To Disney World, no, fuck that.
We've done that New Year's Eve, Disney thing before, and it just is not,

Speaker 2 it is so incredibly crowded down there.

Speaker 2 I don't know if I told this story before. I'm sure I have because I've told every story in the commercial break, but I think I remember this.

Speaker 2 We went one year for New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, and Astrid's birthday, which is the second. We went one time down to Disney World for that.

Speaker 2 And we didn't get, we spent the entire day there and we did not get on one ride. What? Not one.
The average wait time was three hours. The average wait time was three hours.

Speaker 2 The big rides were four or five hours.

Speaker 2 There were some rides that didn't even have wait times posted because I don't think they knew exactly how long it was going to take for the last person to get in the door.

Speaker 2 Instead of like, you can't afford it. Yes.
You just can't.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Listen, if there's no wait time,

Speaker 2 if the wait time doesn't say zero minutes, it just means it's way too long.

Speaker 2 And actually, the fire marshal closed the Magic Kingdom where we were, closed the Magic Kingdom minutes after we got in the door. So we got there at like 9 o'clock, 9.30 in the morning.

Speaker 2 Just in the nick of time to ride. Just in the nick of time to get no rides.

Speaker 2 And we stayed there till the fireworks, and we ended up spending four or five hours standing in one place to get a good spot for the fireworks.

Speaker 2 So around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, because we noticed everybody was starting to gather to get their spot for the fireworks, we also did the same thing like a bunch of morons and stood there waiting for the fireworks.

Speaker 2 We would take turns standing. Are they spectacular? They were not as spectacular as the weight would indicate.
This was a bust all around.

Speaker 2 No, because everyone is now a fucking shithead. So they all sit on top of each other's shoulders and you know, everyone's filming everything and they got their phone in front of your face.

Speaker 2 And it's just like it's like everything that includes crowds or other human beings these days, there's a certain amount of misery that

Speaker 2 comes with being around the human race.

Speaker 2 And that is my assessment of the Great wolf lodge like everything in life there is a certain amount of misery that comes with other human beings right i'm so excited to hear this the great wolf lodge was what we decided on we looked at the great wolf lodge as long as we've been i've heard about the great wolf lodge opened about five years ago i think i've seen the commercials sometimes you see the commercials they have many locations throughout the country indoor swimming it's an indoor water park okay but it really what they call it is an indoor indoor adventure park.

Speaker 2 It's a tree dish. Oh, yes.
And what it really is, is an indoor bird flu incubator. That's really what it is.
A COVID-19

Speaker 2 D-Day.

Speaker 2 It is not just a water park. Well, let me explain.
So we decide on this, and you know, okay, we've been looking at it for five years. It's been open for about five years to much fanfare.

Speaker 2 We got a great Wolf Lodge. It's not in the city.
It's about an hour and a half outside of the city near Alabama.

Speaker 2 And so we go, Astrid's, you know, looking as she does as the vacation planner, she looks through all the options and the sales and the details. Okay, let's go on a Sunday.
It's a little bit cheaper.

Speaker 2 Kids have off school on Monday. And she finds this deal for there are three kinds of rooms there.

Speaker 2 There's the great, the wolf adventure room, or whatever the fuck you call it, which has a king-size bed and then some bunk beds that are like built into the wall in a little tree house. Cute, cool.

Speaker 2 Kids love that.

Speaker 2 There's the second type of room, which is, there's actually two rooms, two queen-size beds in one room. And then they have the little shitty bunk beds that are built into the wall in a tree house.

Speaker 2 And then they have the

Speaker 2 suite or whatever.

Speaker 2 The, we're going to get you this time suite. Here comes your credit card suite

Speaker 2 with two, three rooms, one living room's kitchenette.

Speaker 2 Two bedrooms, pullout couch, the whole nine yards. So we do this because we have a lot of people with us.
And we said, better than two rooms, let's just get one and we can all stay in the same room.

Speaker 2 So we get in the car early. I don't use the same bathroom.
Well, there's two bathrooms, luckily. There's two bathrooms.
Luckily, luckily, Brian can shit in peace. I was wondering.

Speaker 2 I don't like to be bothered when I shit. I get, I've got, I've got stage fright when it comes to pooping.
And so if I have to poop in a room with other people that I don't know, I don't do it.

Speaker 2 I just, I would rather

Speaker 2 go down to the bacteria-laden pool bathroom and take my chances with herpes simplex A on my asshole than poop in front of other people. So,

Speaker 2 so we get in, you know, so we decide, oh, and here's the deal: so you can, and once you book your room, you got to put a deposit down.

Speaker 2 But once you do that, you can go there at any time, the day of your check-in, and you can check in, get your wristbands, and go and enjoy the pool, even though the rooms are not ready until four o'clock.

Speaker 2 Now, I have seen videos online about Great Wolf Lodge, and I knew enough to know that the check-in process can be a little bit hairy, that oftentimes there are many people standing in line at one time to check in, even though they have 30 people checking people in.

Speaker 2 It's like Las Vegas, when there's big hotels and everybody's checking in at the same time, especially on crowded days, on vacation days, you're going to wait in line. Bring your patience.

Speaker 2 Everybody packs in the old truckster, off 35 plus family roadster, and we head an hour and a half. No traffic, lovely drive.

Speaker 2 We get there relatively quickly, and we pull up to the Great Wolf Lodge that is literally in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 2 But on the road leading to the road to the Great Wolf Lodge, there has popped up a home to sweets, a McDonald's, a Chick-fil-A, a Wendy's, a QT.

Speaker 2 You know, there's the signs that everybody else is looking to profit off us idiots who are spending way too much money on the Great Wolf Lodge.

Speaker 2 I should also share with you that Astrid and I had a conversation.

Speaker 2 We decided because the Great Wolf Lodge is really in the middle of nowhere and we only have one night and we're probably not going to want to leave to go eat something, we should get one of those ED packages.

Speaker 2 You know, the

Speaker 2 wolf paw package where you too, you spend $130 and get $132 worth of food, whatever it is. You get a $4 discount and they encourage you to buy it ahead of time.
So we did.

Speaker 2 We get to the Great Wolf Lodge and instantaneously the shitheads are ablazing. The shitheads are out in full force and I'll explain why.

Speaker 2 We turn this corner and you got to ride down a rather long road, half a mile and then you got a right and then you got to turn into the Great Wolf Lodge.

Speaker 2 It's got a big sign Great Wolf Lodge and you go in there and then it's probably a quarter of a mile long road to get to the actual like portico right where you can either valet park your car or you can take around the circle and go self-park.

Speaker 2 I'm picturing people throwing the keys. Ding.
Chrissy.

Speaker 2 Throwing the keys would have been an improvement to what these assholes were doing. We get there, and we're like 15

Speaker 2 cars away from the actual roundabout. Oh, you had the line to like get up to the roundabout.
We had the line to get up there. The roundabout is chaos.
There are cars parked sideways in the roundabout.

Speaker 2 People, it looked like they don't, like, I don't know. Like, there was a nuclear explosion going to happen.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they're like, ah, get out.

Speaker 2 Check into the bacteria-laden pool quickly. We got the day to spend.
We ought to get there now.

Speaker 2 People were just getting out of the car right there in the line, to the line, to the parking lot. People were exiting the car and taking out their bags and just walking up to the front door.

Speaker 2 And I thought to myself,

Speaker 2 as soon as we pulled in, Brian's irritation level runs to an 11. Astrid's already calming me down.
It's okay. It's okay.
We'll get there.

Speaker 2 We got the whole day. She knows me so well.
But as everybody's getting out of their car, I said, take the kids. Get the kids.
Get to safety.

Speaker 2 Get away from me and the other assholes immediately. Get everybody out of the car.
Don't worry about the bags. We can't check in for another 12 hours anyway.

Speaker 2 Or we can't get our room to another 12 hours anyway. Just go and get in.
To which she does. She grabs everybody.
She grabs the kid.

Speaker 2 And it takes me about, I don't know, about 10 minutes to weave my way through parked cars sideways. There's a big sign, Chrissy, right under the portico.

Speaker 2 It's like five lanes across this portico, and it says, Valet parking these two lanes, valet parking this left lane, or super premium parking this lane. These two lanes do not stop in this lane.

Speaker 2 There's a sign hanging from the ceiling. There's two signs like on those, you know, little coney things.
You know, those it says, do not stop in this lane.

Speaker 2 I get finally managed to make my way to the portico. I can see the self-parking button.
I can see that gate. I'm almost pressing it until some Yahoo runs out in her bathing suit.

Speaker 2 It's 42 degrees, by the way. A sight to behold.

Speaker 2 Runs out in her bathing suit with her big 7-Eleven big gulp in her hand to have a full conversation with the lady in the car in front of me. I am stuck.
I am going nowhere. Why? I don't know.

Speaker 2 We're talking about what flavors of slushy 7-Eleven has on sale today or how wonderful the pool is. I'd love to get there first.
Could you please move out of the fucking

Speaker 2 baby? I have my hand on the beep beep. But the lady eventually like looked back at me and I think she could see that I had no, like a like, I'm not fucking around.
Beep alert, beep alert.

Speaker 2 She looked at me, she had a few more sentences. She looked back at me, she had a few more sentences.
She looked back, she had a few more sentences.

Speaker 2 And then finally, the lady who was driving stuck her head out of the window, looked back at me, and then she was like, Waved. Like, we're five minutes into her conversation.

Speaker 2 And at this point, I'm like, smoke a cigarette. Why not? I mean, let's finish what you're saying.
Can I talk? Can we all ask me? You want to play poker?

Speaker 2 We're all trying to get into that pool so we can get sick. Can you, yeah, please? Can we hurry?

Speaker 2 I get over there. I get into the lane.
I press the button. And the park, the parking situation is an immense cluster.
Fuck, it is the biggest parking lot you've ever seen in your entire life.

Speaker 2 And it's just chaos. It's got arrows about which way you're supposed to go, but no one's paying attention to the arrows because, God forbid, they thought they saw a parking space somewhere.

Speaker 2 It is like the mall on Christmas Eve. You know what I'm saying? People are following people out.
You know,

Speaker 2 are you leaving?

Speaker 2 You leaving? Yeah, but I'm six miles that way. I don't care.
I'm going to follow you.

Speaker 2 Well, I got lucky and I managed to see someone pulling out like in the last spot. I saw them pulling out.

Speaker 2 And just by like, the parking gods kissed my face because I managed to park relatively close to the building, to an entrance. It's so good when that happens.
I know.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we call it rock star parking. When you get that, you're like, rock star parking.

Speaker 2 And we're relative, I'm relatively close to one of the four entrances to the Great Wolf Lodge Adventure Park, which is what it says on the door. Great Wolf Lodge Adventure Park.

Speaker 2 So I park and I run in and I find Astrid. The kids are already at the gift shop.
They're already like moving toward the gift shop.

Speaker 2 And by the way, those gift shops get everybody. I've now had to prep my kids anytime we go anywhere, like a Chuck E.
Cheese, a six flags, a water park, anything like that.

Speaker 2 And here's the conversation that I say. And they already know what I'm talking about.
I don't even have to preface the conversation. I say, don't even ask.

Speaker 2 Don't even ask. But dad, I want a lightsaber with a wolf on it.
Don't even ask. If you ask, we're going to go home.
Do you want to go home? Do you want to sit in the car the whole time? I'm now,

Speaker 2 I've now decided that I'm using my parents' tactics. Of course, you are.
Yeah. I'm being a bully to stop the bullying.
You know what I'm saying? Do you want to sit in the car the entire time?

Speaker 2 We're going home. Do you want to go home? It's not that far to drive.
And everybody else can have fun, and you can stay here. If you ask for that fucking lightsaber, one more goddamn thing.

Speaker 2 Everybody else can have fun.

Speaker 2 Everybody else can have fun, and you and I will go sit until I get to watch TV was one of my kids' responses. No, no TV.
I don't want to go home. Okay, then shh, shh, no.

Speaker 2 Can we go look? No, I know what looking leads to. Oh, yeah.
Looking leads to asking me for everything. But then I'm a big softie, so then I say, okay, we can go look.

Speaker 2 And then, you know, of course, they say, can I buy something and I buy it, right? Okay, whatever. This time I held strong, though.

Speaker 2 I didn't buy anything from the Great Wolf Lodge except for everything, except for those shitty little things.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 we're all in this

Speaker 2 gift shop the line is immense to get in the place it is just everybody chaos everywhere there are people in bathing suits guys with t-shirts off girls with does it have that smell it's oh the chlorine smelling indoor humidity but humidity but to me that's a comfort because i know that chlorine is bleach and bleach kills most things right so i'm like if i can't smell it in the parking lot i'm getting concerned do you know what i'm saying i'm willing to deal with bloodshot eyes for the next six to 12 days as long as I don't get gonorrhea of the mouth because I went swimming at the indoor pool.

Speaker 2 So when you walk in, it's just this huge lobby. And in the lobby, after we get out of the, um, after we get out of the, the gift shop, they lead you through the gift shop to go.
No, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 The gift shop is across the way from the check-in. Okay.

Speaker 2 I think they keep the check-in purposefully

Speaker 2 like I think they keep the check-in a little purposefully slow. Like it is a long check-in process for many different reasons.

Speaker 2 Go look at the gift shop. Exactly.
Like, one of my kids is doing right now.

Speaker 2 And so they, I know, the kids run down the hallway, and you can hear every step of these microphones.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it is with purpose. I got to put like, you know, a piece of paper or something.
I don't know, like a big pillow under this or something. I always wonder what she's writing to.

Speaker 2 Well, she runs with her heels. That one is a heel runner.
So you know when she's coming down because you, it's a heel run, right?

Speaker 2 Some of my other kids run on their tiptoes, and it's a little, it's a much different sound. So they keep that gift shop right across from the check-in, across the lobby from the check-in.

Speaker 2 And then midway between those two is a little area with a couple of Christmas trees. And they have Wolfie the Wolf, Wolfie the Swimming Wolf, or whatever it is, right? The character.
So we get out.

Speaker 2 I've got my kids. I'm holding my youngest's hand.
She's walking across. And she sees that Wolfie the swim, swim, wolf, or whatever it is.
And she

Speaker 2 stops. Terrified.
Dead in her tracks.

Speaker 2 She is like.

Speaker 2 and I go, oh, do you want to go see Wolfie the swim swim wolf?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 It's scary. And she can't move.
I'm like trying to get her to move and she won't move. She's just staring at Wolfie Wolfie the swim swim wolf.
And so eventually now I'm dragging my child across the

Speaker 2 lobby.

Speaker 2 She's like this and I'm dragging her and she's still staring at Wolfie Wolfie the swim swim wolf. And I'm like, it's okay.
It's just a pretend care. You know, it's okay.
Everything's okay.

Speaker 2 He's a friendly wolf that'll kill you.

Speaker 2 It's like the new Disney movie. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's like the new Disney movie. It'll bleed real blood if you heard it.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 then it's clear that Astrid and Gustavo and Ali are standing there. It's clear that we are nowhere close to check-in.

Speaker 2 We're at least 30 minutes away from this. So I say to the kids, let's go on an adventure and go see what this place has.

Speaker 2 Yeah, go check it out because it has a big sign and it's like adventure park this way. And I know they have more than just the pool, so I'm interested to kind of see what the setup is, right?

Speaker 2 Of course, you are

Speaker 2 at a resort, the slides, and all that other stuff. Chrissy, I turn that corner, and it is a hellscape.

Speaker 2 It is a hellscape of Americana, a hellscape of Americana.

Speaker 2 People in bathing suits dripping wet, smelling like BO,

Speaker 2 feet with gangrene,

Speaker 2 spilling out of all kinds of clothing.

Speaker 2 There's got to be a bar. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 ladies with, you know, nipples hanging out and not in the way you'd want. Like, just like every hanging out at the bar,

Speaker 2 it's this huge hallway, and the hallway is immense. And in the hallway, there is a Dunkin' Donuts, an ice cream shop, a Bill de Bear.
Oh, God. A pizza place,

Speaker 2 a ropes course, a miniature golf, a restaurant that sells tacos. It's a lot of stuff.
It's pretty big, actually. The place is pretty big.
A huge arcade, like a huge arcade. So I have two thoughts.

Speaker 2 Number one, I hate all these people. Get me out of here.
And number two is at least we have something to do for the next 24 hours. At least my kids will be entertained.

Speaker 2 And when you're a parent, that's a big deal. It is.

Speaker 2 When you know you can wear your kids out and not have to leave where you're sleeping, that's a really big deal. Like try and do that at this house.

Speaker 2 They've already seen everything there is to see about this house. They're going to get bored real quick.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 They need new stimulation. So, all I do is walk my kids up the hallway and back down the hallway.
We see the pool. I can see it.
I see it through the glass doors.

Speaker 2 I can see that my life is going to be a nightmare for the next little bit. But preparing yourself.
The kids, yeah. The kids, all of a sudden, they're starting to act scared.

Speaker 2 They're like, Dad, I want mommy. And I'm like, Why do you want mommy? Your daddy's right here.
And she's like, No, I want mommy. One of my kids is like, No, I want mommy.

Speaker 2 This is, it's too loud in here. It's too much in here.
You know, I don't want to go to the pool by myself. And I'm like, you're not going, who's going to send you to the pool by yourself?

Speaker 2 I'm your daddy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm your dad.

Speaker 2 Hey, get out there.

Speaker 2 Tackle that water slide, kid. What are you? 16 inches tall? Get out there, tackle it.

Speaker 2 All of a sudden, I can see that my kids, it's like overload for them. yeah.
It's too many people. It's too many noises.
It's too many lights.

Speaker 2 It's too many things to think about seeing or doing at one time. I have made the very big error as a parent of not easing my kids into it.
I just let them go right for it.

Speaker 2 That's why, and I've said this before in the past, that's why I think Disney World is maybe not the greatest place on earth for small children is because it's overload.

Speaker 2 There's too many people, too many things to do, too many things to see. They get like their little brains can't take it.
You can almost see the smoke coming out of their ears.

Speaker 2 So I quickly rush them back to Astrid. To To mommy.
She is getting ready to check in to the room.

Speaker 2 And what happens next will surprise everybody. Let's take a break.

Speaker 2 Let's take a break and I'm going to share with you my experiences at the Great Wolf Lodge Water Park or whatever they're calling it these days when we get back.

Speaker 6 Did you know that we have a phone number? Well, we do. And you should call us.
Nobody's going to answer, but you can leave a voicemail for us that we may or may not play on the show.

Speaker 6 And if that's not the vibe, then just send us a text, okay? Our number is 212-433-3 TCB. So get texting and give us something to talk about, please.

Speaker 2 We need it.

Speaker 6 While you're doing that, you can also follow us on Instagram at thecommercial break and on TikTok at TCB Podcast.

Speaker 6 And as always, check out our website, tcbpodcast.com, for all of our audio and video content. Speaking of video, we are also posting full video episodes at youtube.com/slash the commercial break.

Speaker 2 So go watch them, please!

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Speaker 2 So, uh, so we're here at the Great Wolf Lodge. So we get up to the checkout and then Astra kind of throws me into the, you know, she kind of throws me into the checkout situation.
That's fine.

Speaker 2 I'm okay with that. And so I'm talking to the lady who's very nice, by the way.
You know, I'm talking to the lady at the front and she says, well, listen, here's the deal.

Speaker 2 You can use the pool anytime you want to. You got to,

Speaker 2 she's giving me like the rundown. You go to the pool, you get your towels.
If you don't return them, they're $15 a piece. And I'm like, $15 a piece to not return the pool towels.

Speaker 2 Okay, I guess I got to try. That's an incentive.
Yeah, that's an incentive to return your pool towels. And she says, everything happens on your wristband.

Speaker 2 So who do you want to have charging privileges on your wristband? Great Wolf Lodge is a cruise ship. That's what it is.
It's a cruise ship.

Speaker 2 And just like every cruise ship in the world and now every theme park in the world, they have figured out how to part you with your money more efficiently by making sure it's a cashless cruise ship.

Speaker 2 You have no cash. They take no credit cards.
You must boop your rest, your wristband. That's the only way you get anything anywhere in this place.
And so instantly, I know I'm fucked.

Speaker 2 This, you know, $300 vacation that we're supposed to take is going to turn into $1,000 in a heartbeat.

Speaker 2 And I know from the looks of this place that it's going to be not easy to leave to get food at a Wendy's or whatever. We're going to have to eat here.
Yeah, I'm not sure there. You're there.
Tracy.

Speaker 2 I already know I'm about to get ass fucked by this great wolf lodge.

Speaker 2 I want to bend over and have Wolfie the swim swim wolf

Speaker 2 stick his little wolf dick in my ass. I probably would have felt better about the whole situation.
And so she said. You should have been scared.
I was.

Speaker 2 i was when you saw wolfie earlier i was scared when i you and your daughter yes

Speaker 2 i was scared when the people in the chevy corsica in front of me got out with all 14 of their kroger bags containing their luggage oh god do you know what i'm saying yeah it was a crowd and listen it was all kinds of people it wasn't you know it was all kinds of people and it was it was a good mix of society which is a terrible mix of society at any day and age here at 2025.

Speaker 2 so the lady puts the wristbands on. We put the wristbands on, and you know, you've got the adventure pack, so you can do whatever here.
She says, you can do whatever you want.

Speaker 2 You can do the mini golf, you can do the string score, the ropes course, you could do the rock climbing, you could do this, you can do that.

Speaker 2 It's all included in your great wolf adventure, great super premium wolf, you are far far package. And I'm like, okay, that's great.
Good thinking.

Speaker 2 All right, we can do something besides swim in that fucking disgusting pool.

Speaker 2 And she goes, there's your room type. I have a room available right now, actually, if you'd like to take it.
And I was like, Oh, really? Yes, of course, because we don't have our bathing suits on.

Speaker 2 We prepared for that. We made a bag.

Speaker 2 But I'm thinking, if I don't have to take my socks off and step in somebody else's defecation in the bathroom of the indoor pool at the Great Wolf Lodge, then I'd prefer to do that.

Speaker 2 At least I take my chances in the hotel room, which I know is probably equally as disgusting, but at least.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Did you bring shower shoes? I brought bathing shoes.
I brought swim shoes for the kids, and I wore sandals. Okay.
Listen, these feet, they've seen it all. They have been to war.

Speaker 2 They've been to a fish show. Okay.

Speaker 2 There's nothing the Gray Wolf Watch can throw at it that it's not already seen.

Speaker 2 I have layers and layers of filth on the bottom of my feet that are never coming off. And

Speaker 2 no amount of chlorine is going to make it better. It's whatever.
I'm okay with my own feet. I'm an adult.
I figure I can handle it.

Speaker 2 I know I don't have any open sores or cuts on my feet, so I figure I'll take my chances. I'm not going to wear swim shoes.
I don't like them. So she says, okay, fourth floor.

Speaker 2 And okay, all right, sure, yeah, okay. Only the best.
Only the best.

Speaker 2 Only the best for you, sir. You've reserved the premium

Speaker 2 package.

Speaker 2 You can go on the rope course at a discounted price because you bought the R package.

Speaker 2 You get two chlamydia-filled rooms with the RAR package.

Speaker 2 Your air conditioning will blow cold air all night long with the RAR package.

Speaker 2 Okay, great. Wonderful.

Speaker 2 Rooms this way to the left. Fun that way to the right.
Enjoy your stay. I said, okay.
She goes, and if you want it, everybody has to be out by 11, but you can get late checkout, 2 p.m.

Speaker 2 Just call down here. Remember this.
Okay. I said, okay, great.
So, and she goes, and you have all day today and all day tomorrow to play. You, you, you can, if you want to check out your room,

Speaker 2 put your stuff in the car, you know, come swim, do whatever, take advantage. You got 48 full hours of fun.
We're not going to ask you to leave.

Speaker 2 And I was like, well, thank God, because you've already charged me $8,000 for this shitty thing. At least give me the dignity of swimming in that, you know,

Speaker 2 toilet water for a little bit longer.

Speaker 2 So we, I say, kids, great news. You know, I feel like a hero.
You know how you feel like a hero sometimes, like you did something magical. You're like, kids, great news.
Room's ready.

Speaker 2 Everybody's excited about that. I run, I grab the bags.

Speaker 2 By the way, the one thing I will say the Great Wolf Lodge did really smartly, and they've probably learned this over the years because there's many locations throughout the United States, not just here in Georgia.

Speaker 2 The one thing that they do really smartly is they have the luggage carts.

Speaker 2 you know, the push luggage carts like they do at the airport, and they have hundreds of them all over the property, and they're free. So, you don't have to pay for them.
Oh, that's nice.

Speaker 2 So, you out in the parking lot, inside the building, upstairs on the floors. They have them everywhere so that you have the convenience of not having to drag everything up.

Speaker 2 Including in parking spaces.

Speaker 2 Yes, that's correct. Well, I mean, I didn't see too many in parking spaces

Speaker 2 because all the parking spaces were full. And I got to tell you something.

Speaker 2 While I had no intention of spending one more day at the Great Wolf Lodge, it would appear some people were there for the month, the amount of luggage that they were bringing into the facility.

Speaker 2 And they'd have like one kid in tow, and they were bringing like two, three luggage carts full of shit. I thought to myself, how long can you stay at the Great Wolf Lodge?

Speaker 2 This isn't Disney World in Florida. This isn't a 10-day vacation.
You do this one night, and I'm sure it's good. I'm about to find out, but I'm sure it's good.
Anyway, so I get the luggage cart.

Speaker 2 I go and I meet everybody up at the room. The room is big.
It is nondescript. It is not anything to write home about.

Speaker 2 It's relatively clean in the sense that there's a bunch of wet bathing suits and kids lying all over.

Speaker 2 The carpet has seen its better days, but it's dark colored. So at least I know that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, most of the blood, semen, and fucking puke is, you know, mixed in with the colors of the floor. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But it is not the worst thing in the world. It's like

Speaker 2 a kind of dirty home to suites. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But we have a view. The way the building is a big you.
So the lobby is in front. The rooms are on one side.
The pool and everything else is on the other side.

Speaker 2 So we have a view of the outdoor pools and the glass walls of the indoor water park. So get up there.
There's a room with a king bed. Astrid's like, you take the king bed, babe.

Speaker 2 I know you're going to need that after

Speaker 2 today. You're going to need something to look forward to.
And I was like, you're an angel. And I open those curtains.
And what do I see? I see a couple of things.

Speaker 2 I see a half-empty outdoor pool that's pretty big, but not huge. Half-empty outdoor pool.

Speaker 2 By the way,

Speaker 2 it is cold outside. It is like

Speaker 2 33, 34 degrees outside. I see a hot tub, a 50-person hot tub.
I've never seen a hot tub this big in my life. And there are 55 people in it of varying shapes and sizes, colors and creeds.

Speaker 2 It looks like a real party in there. Oh, yeah.
And most of those those people are adults. And most of those adults have yard drinks in their hands.

Speaker 2 And I am like... Like the senior frogs.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 I can see the neon drinks from two football fields away where I'm like, I'm looking at this and I'm like, do they sell yard beers here? They sell yard drinks here? Yeah. That's insane.

Speaker 2 It's the Great Wolf Lodge. I guess you could look at it one of two ways.

Speaker 2 Either you're a real fucking alcoholic when you're drinking a yard drink at the outdoor sauna or spa at the Great Wolf Lodge in the middle of winter in Georgia, or that's what you have to do just to get that.

Speaker 2 That's what you have to do.

Speaker 2 There's also a playground outside, a little outdoor playground that's attached to this kind of outdoor pool area. And there are parents and children that are on that playground in their bathing suits.

Speaker 2 People are weird. I mean, just like, what are you thinking? Anyway, okay, kids, hurry up, get your bathing suits.
I close the curtains again real quick. I did.
I closed them real quick. I was a fear.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, I didn't want to, I already knew what was coming.
I,

Speaker 2 it, it's like that one time I went to jail. I didn't want to think about jail before I went to jail.
Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I didn't want to think about it before I went there.

Speaker 2 Listen, I had high hopes. And when I say high hopes, I mean I hoped that at least I could have a little bit of fun with the kids.
That That was my hope.

Speaker 2 Is that they had fun and I had a little bit of fun with them. And that would make it, that would make the trip all worth it.
We get on our bathing suits. We go downstairs.
It's an exciting moment.

Speaker 2 It's an exciting moment. Turina, the kids, they're all excited.
They got their, daddy, will you swim with me? Do I have to wear a life jacket? I said, no, you know,

Speaker 2 if this is where we go, this is where we go.

Speaker 2 I said, hey, listen, no, just stick close. You know how how to swim.
We'll figure it out.

Speaker 2 And then we get to that little, you know, the little turnstiles and we pop in those big open doors that are all fogged because it's, you know, a different temperature here than it is there.

Speaker 2 And as soon as we open those doors, it's like the soup of a million sweaty bodies just stick to you.

Speaker 2 And the first thing that you see, and the first thing that you see when you open those doors of the Great Wolf Lodge is not the wave pool, is not some fascinating, exciting, thrilling water slide you're going to go down.

Speaker 2 It's a bar, a tiki bar, rising up out of the middle of this cement jungle. It's all cement.

Speaker 2 It's one big cement pad with pools and lazy rivers and splash parks and kids' pools and all this other stuff.

Speaker 2 And there in the middle, just like 50, 60 feet in front of you is a bar with like 40 seats to it that go around it.

Speaker 2 It's not in the water. It's out of the water.

Speaker 2 And all I can see out of the 40 seats that are around that bar are 40 miserably sad human beings sitting and drinking at the Great Wolf Lodge Indoor Water Park Bar. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 You have had to have had a really rough life or at the very least a rough day to belly up to the indoor water park bar for a yard drink and a well liquor

Speaker 2 part of your raw premium package Chrissy

Speaker 2 everybody had sad eyes at that bar everybody had sad eyes

Speaker 2 because they knew just like I knew

Speaker 2 that this is probably as good as it gets Now that we have kids,

Speaker 2 the next phase of our lives is shitting in a diaper that's it it's the great wolf lawrence bar and then it's shitting in a diaper

Speaker 2 and so we better enjoy it now got to yeah yeah get your liquor in because the bar at the senior citizen's home is no fucking better that's all i gotta say i'm sad just thinking about it it gives me a chill

Speaker 2 i can

Speaker 2 makes my balls go back up into my belly

Speaker 2 so of course we gotta go and but by the way, here's the setup of the place. You look at the bar right ahead of you.
To the right is the towel stand and a row of lockers on a wall.

Speaker 2 Then there's the bathroom and the showers, showers, and all this other stuff. It takes a shower in there.
I don't know. You could buy a day pass, by the way.
You don't have to stay there.

Speaker 2 You can buy a day pass. I think that's even the sadder thing you do, but whatever.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Lounge chairs. Picnic tables that you can eat on.
A little restaurant to the left.

Speaker 2 A little splash park for the kids with a couple small water slides for the toddlers, a big splash park for the older kids.

Speaker 2 In the back to the left, are three or four adult-size water slides that go out of the building and then come back in.

Speaker 2 Adult-size water slides. Adult-size water slides.
Like water slides you and I would want to go on, right? You know, but you have to, they're all after you're taking a few shots at the bottom.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. Or you have children.
That's the only reason to be there. Even though I did see a couple of adults that looked like maybe they were there on their own.

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't know what possesses you, but I was 19 once too. You know, maybe I would have thought that was a good idea at 19 years old.
Maybe, I don't know.

Speaker 2 Then there's a wave pool, and the wave pool above it, like, you know, the wave pool goes down into the ground, and then above it, there are a bunch of cabanas.

Speaker 2 Well, I can size up immediately that there are no available seats for seven, eight of us. That's not going to happen.

Speaker 2 And so I ask Astrid, Even this is probably the worst thing I've ever asked Astrid in our entire marriage. Should I look into getting getting a cabana?

Speaker 2 And Astrid goes, no, we're already going to spend enough money here. Don't get a cabana.
I'll find a couple seats. We're probably not going to be sitting there anyway.
Let's play with the kids.

Speaker 2 And I said, all right, you know what? Fair dues, fair dues. Let's go.
She finds a couple of seats. We put our towels down.
By the way,

Speaker 2 people are so terrible.

Speaker 2 Human beings are so terrible that the reason why there's not a lot of available seating is because in the Great Wolf Lodge, there are no rules like there are some places, uh, like other pools in the United States or other theme parks, that you can't just put a bunch of towels down to save it to save it, you have to be sitting in the seat,

Speaker 2 somebody

Speaker 2 has to be sitting around, right?

Speaker 2 They can, and you can actually do this on the tables where you are eating, too.

Speaker 2 So, what people were doing is just putting towels and bags down on the tables, and there was no one sitting there, but you'd feel like an asshole if you move there. So, right now,

Speaker 2 so Astrid finds a couple of towels near the kitty, a couple of chairs near the kiddie pool, like the kiddie section, and she puts our towels down and our bag.

Speaker 2 Even though there are available seats, we just take two. That's it.
We're going to be nice human beings, and we're going to take two. So we take those two seats.
Towels on one, bag on the other.

Speaker 2 Everybody gets disrobed. We all run off to go do different things.
In the kiddie pool, and then I take the kids over to the wave pool. That wave pool

Speaker 2 has a filter around it. So at a little above the water line, it's got this like, it's like a filter.
It's a black mesh metal thing, whereas the waves come, it takes all the shit out of the pool.

Speaker 2 Chrissy, I can't describe what that black metal mesh looked like because I don't want to make any of our listeners sick, but you can only imagine what was stuck in there.

Speaker 2 Hair ties with pieces of hair, shoes, fingernails, I'm sure pieces of puke. I'm not sure what was in there, but you didn't want to look.
That's not what you did. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Once those waves started coming, and okay, so we walk into the water, all of us together. We walk into that wave pool water.

Speaker 2 That we noticed when we took, when we got undressed and we were walking over to the wave pool that the air was a little bit chilly, it had a little chill in it, right?

Speaker 2 But I thought to myself, that's okay. They're keeping the water at 85 degrees.
That's pretty warm, right? It's not like hot, but it's pretty warm. It's not like jacuzzi hot, but it's pretty warm.

Speaker 2 When we walked into that wave pool, Chrissy, the water could not have been more than 78 degrees.

Speaker 2 And 78 degrees water is not warm. Your body is at 98 degrees.
So when it's 20 degrees less than your body, you're going to be chilly, just like Christina is here in the studio right now.

Speaker 2 That water was cold. It felt cold.
And as soon as we got into it, one of my children started shivering. Now he has no meat on his bones anyway, but he's like,

Speaker 2 and he's like, you can see him shaking. And I'm like, hey, little buddy, like, are you okay? And he's like, I'm fine.
I'm fine.

Speaker 2 He doesn't want to go anywhere because he knows that he knows I've taken him out of other pools because he shivered before. He doesn't doesn't want to, so he's saying he's fine.

Speaker 2 So now I'm like, I grab him, I put him on my chest, I'm trying to create some body heat, you know, I'm like, it's okay, run around, go do some swimming, you know, get your. Why is it so cold?

Speaker 2 I believe this. This is what I think now that I had been there during the day and I had felt the water during the evening.
I believe that the heaters go on full at night.

Speaker 2 When it's cold, when they know it's going to be cold, when there's no sun to warm it up. But because there are so many glass windows in this place, I think they turn it down.

Speaker 2 They turn the heat in the water, the heaters down a little bit, hoping that the ambient air will keep the temperature warm. But I think they misjudged bodies.
Yeah, I swear to God.

Speaker 2 I think they misjudged this water a little bit. I think they misjudged the weather a little bit because the water was cold.
And once it's cold, it's really hard to heat all that water up at one time.

Speaker 2 So it was cold. It was not pleasant.
It didn't feel good. So not only now were we kind of in this cesspool, having a good time.
Oh my god, Chrissy, we were having a

Speaker 2 the waves started coming, the kids were getting knocked all over the place, yeah, the water's freezing cold. Yes,

Speaker 2 let me give you a let me give you a kind of like a summation of what was going on in the wave pool.

Speaker 2 There was a couple of uh

Speaker 2 parents that were there. The parents,

Speaker 2 I don't know, they I don't know how to say this without being rude. They were larger people, right? And they had a kid, and the kid was probably 10 years old, and the kid was tiny.

Speaker 2 He was tiny, he was like a little stick figure. The kid was standing there, like kind of holding his mom, because I think he was cold.

Speaker 2 He's like kind of against her belly, and his pants were down around his knees, floating with the waves in the wave pool.

Speaker 2 And for five minutes, no one alerted the child that his little Willy Wing Wang or his nasty ass was hanging out. Not even his mother, who could clearly probably see what was going on.

Speaker 2 As a matter of fact, she picked him up at one point and started swinging him around in the water, so his asshole was dipping in the water.

Speaker 2 I told the kids, I said, we got to get going. Yeah, we're out of here.
We got to get going. We're out of here.
I can't take this anyway. Let's go somewhere else.

Speaker 2 Let's go to another disease-filled pond in here and let's go. To which then we went to the Lazy River.
And the Lazy River is right.

Speaker 2 That is an apt description of what was going on in there there were i mean

Speaker 2 it just like

Speaker 2 you know older kids that were like fucking around

Speaker 2 the splash park that sits above the lazy river they have those water guns where they can point them at you and spray you and all the little shitheads are spraying everybody cold freezing water on you and then the people running around the lazy i i saw one guy at the lazy river the first time i went in it to go to the other side of the water park we took it over to the other side of the water park.

Speaker 2 Then I saw him again in the same inner tube, in the same position, probably 45-year-old man.

Speaker 2 An hour later, he was still riding around the lazy river in Great Wolf Lodge. He had probably been drinking at the bar earlier.
Decided I better go take a nap before I get over it.

Speaker 2 We only spent two hours in this pool because by the

Speaker 2 end of the second hour, it was so incredibly, everybody was so incredibly cold that it no longer became a pleasure to be in the pool.

Speaker 2 Now, the kids wanted to stay, but their little bodies just weren't taking it. We rode some of the big water slides, which were fun.
I will give it that. They were fun.
They were exciting.

Speaker 2 They were good water slides.

Speaker 2 But here's the best part of it. When we, at one point, I say to Astrid, or we say to each other, we better get these kids some food or they're going to get cranky.

Speaker 2 And Astrid goes with Allie to go back and get some food and go back to the chairs. When she gets back to the chairs, our bags are there, but all the towels are gone.
Someone had taken the towels.

Speaker 2 Taken the towels. Taken the towels.
Wow, that was a bold move. Not only did they take the towels, but then they decided to put their own bag on the place on the chair where the towels were.
Oh. So

Speaker 2 one could only make the assumption the people who took the towels are the people who put the bag there.

Speaker 2 But after we saw a lady with a small child and a husband that just didn't look like the kind of people were running around taking towels,

Speaker 2 I made another assumption, which was terrible, that it was just some shithead kids or something that were running around taking people's towels.

Speaker 2 But I would have to say that. It would have been you back in the day.
I know. You're right.
You're so right about this. It would have been me.
It would have been me. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 I took your towels and now Karma came back and took my towels. I'm sorry.
But I did manage to negotiate a deal with the lady at the towels barn. The towel barn is what we're calling it.
I said, hey.

Speaker 2 You were right because you were going to owe money. $15 per towel.

Speaker 2 So I said to the lady, I said, listen, somebody took my towels. And she goes, somebody took your towels.
I said, somebody took my towels.

Speaker 2 And at first she said, like, kind of like accusatory, like, somebody took your towels. But then she said, happens all the time.

Speaker 2 And I was like, then, why'd you accuse me of pretending to take my own towels?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was a test to see if I wanted to get more towels than I should take.

Speaker 2 And she didn't charge me for the towels. And so I felt like that was a bit of grace that I'll give the Great Wolf Lodge is that everybody there was everybody I interviewed.
They were misery together.

Speaker 2 Yes. They were teenagers.
They were young, but they had obviously been trained correctly to be nice to people. And I will give the Great Wolf Lodge that.
Everybody I interacted with was pleasant.

Speaker 2 No one was a dick. No one was, you know, snide or snarky, you know, as teenagers oftentimes can, as young people oftentimes can be.

Speaker 2 You're working in a place where everybody's being shitty and so you're shitting back to them. That didn't happen.
It was really quite nice. Quite frankly, I think I'm going to run over here.

Speaker 2 I think we're going to need to tell the rest of this story because we're only two hours in, and the best is yet to come. Wait till you hear what happened when we got dinner.

Speaker 2 I bet that was an adventure. Oh.

Speaker 2 Oh, Chrissy. Every time you go on these fancy vacations, the dinner is always

Speaker 2 something. You think it's frustrating to go to the local pizza place and wait for your pizza? Go to the Great Wolf Lodge and wait for pizza when 700 other people are waiting for their pizza.

Speaker 2 And I'm going to share with you just how shitty other human beings are. When I tell that part of the story.
Can't wait. Remind me when we get in studio

Speaker 2 to tell the rest of the story or i will forget okay all right next week mr gustavo is going to show up here he's going to do a segment with me here in the studio everyone's really excited about that so don't miss it we'll have a guest next tuesday not sure who that will be though so we're still trying to figure it out uh

Speaker 2 also

Speaker 2 We would love it if you would contact us 212-433-3TCV 212-433-3822. Text us comments, questions, concerns, or content ideas.
We'll take them all there.

Speaker 2 We'll also take a voicemail either way, but be mindful. If you leave a voicemail, I likely will play it on air.
Because that's the kind of guy I am. I'm a human too.
I'm just as shitty as you are.

Speaker 2 Add the commercial break on Instagram, TCB Podcast on TikTok, and you can go to the website, tcbpodcast.com. All the audio, all the video right there from one location.

Speaker 2 So if that's how you feel like you want to consume the podcast, feel free. Go ahead.
Do it there.

Speaker 2 If you could go to youtube.com/slash the commercial break, subscribe and follow us, we sure would appreciate it. Comment on your favorite video.

Speaker 2 You know, do all the stuff that actually engaged listeners do. We would appreciate that.

Speaker 2 If you're still engaged at this point. Yeah, if you're still engaged at this point.
People are throwing up in their mouths for my Great Wolf Lodge.

Speaker 2 I'm not the only one complaining about Great Wolf Lodge, by the way, just to be fair.

Speaker 2 There seems to be a whole niche on TikTok dedicated to Great Wolf Lodge.

Speaker 2 Also, I'll remind you as we go into the new year that we would appreciate it if you use our sponsors specialized URLs and codes when they're on the show. You get free shit, we get paid.

Speaker 2 It's a win-win situation for everybody. Tells our sponsors we're doing our job and it keeps a little jingle in our jingle.
Thanks so much. We appreciate it.
All right, Chrissy.

Speaker 2 That's all I can do for today.

Speaker 2 I think so. I'll tell you that I love you.
I love you. Best you.
Best to you. Best you out there, Mr.
Swimmy Swammy Wolf Pants. Until next time, we do say we will say we must say.

Speaker 2 Goodbye.

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