Foundation Nation
Foundation Nation
S5 - E3: From Bricks to Teen Kicks: Family Fun at Legoland and Celebrating Youthful Resilience
Ever wondered what it's like to be totally immersed in a world built of bricks? Join Matthew and Jay as Jay talks about a recent trip to Legoland and the park's cornerstone—Ninjago World. Jay will give you the inside scoop on the whimsical hotel rooms that had his kids squealing with delight, the convenience of snoozing at the park's edge, and why Legoland's charm holds a special place in the hearts of families.
Then, shift gears with us as we swap tales of teenage resilience, humor, and the power of spontaneous dance-offs. Remember those days when a shoe stuck on train tracks would spark an instant party rather than panic? We're bringing that vibe back, chatting about the social sanctuaries of our formative years and making the case for reclaiming the communal spirit of malls and movie theaters. Come for the nostalgia; stay for the burst of laughter and life lessons served with a side of friendship and carefree abandon.
Hello and welcome to Foundation Nation. I'm your host, matthew Cote. Today on the podcast we're going to talk about some interesting recent goings-ons in our beautiful state and maybe even a few things going on in this amazing round thing we call home.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm Matthew Cote. This is Foundation Nation, along with my co-host, hi this is Jay Solomey, owner of Jay's Technology Solutions.
Speaker 3:Let's start the Fridola for Volody Matt. It's a big word.
Speaker 2:Yes sir, I'm a long time, so what are you up to?
Speaker 3:Oh, we went on vacation. And how did that go? First time in my family, everyone to Legoland. Legoh, that's right. Yeah, how was that? That was impressive, like structure-wise or just Structure-wise for me. Okay, my son loved the Ninjago attraction Actually, it's not Disney, so it's ride. Love the Ninjago ride. Oh, ninjago. Oh, they have. I didn't know they had rides. They have rides there. Yeah, okay, they have a Technic coaster and other.
Speaker 2:So what? Isso is a roller coaster, the Technic coaster is a roller coaster.
Speaker 3:Okay, and the Ninjago ride is what Is where you ride in? Ahave you been on Toy Story Midway Mania? Yep, you know where you're shooting like yeah yeah yeah, you're doing the same thing, but with your hands. You're just shooting straight out with your hands holding back. Oh okay, oh okay, you know, kind of like your record player.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, okay, Just straight out, and you're just throwing things.
Speaker 3:I don't know what that was. That was bad.
Speaker 2:That was bad. Yeah, bad sounding. Yeah, try and bring back the 80s. So what wastell me about thelike the inside of the hotel and the? We have the.
Speaker 3:Ninjago themed room. Oh room, yeah, oh Jesus. So there was the king size bed, and then there is the bathroom, and then on the other side of that is a bunk beds for the kids.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then the theme is like pictures and carpet and painting. Yes, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:And then you can go to the bathroom sometime.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, and so is there one Ninjago room or multiple, or how does?
Speaker 3:There's multiple, yeah, there's different sections of the one hotel that have different theming. Okay, ninjago, friends, I think City, I think it's like four or five ones.
Speaker 2:What's the history of Ninjago? I don't even know. Like where did that come from? What's the deal? I really don't know. Just some kind of new.
Speaker 3:Lego thing. It's been out for a while.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:I know it's been out for a while.
Speaker 2:But I mean, it's just like they just A theme Okay, and then the buildings and dreams and the city. Are they easier to build?
Speaker 3:They're a mix of technique and standard blocks and plates.
Speaker 2:Okay, but Can regular Legos work with them? Yes, oh, they can.
Speaker 3:Lego works with Lego.
Speaker 2:End of story.
Speaker 3:Okay, all right. Yeah, doesn't matter what set it is, which is very nice, yeah, no?
Speaker 2:Legos is great, so thenow, what about the hotel? If I'm walking in the entrance, what do I see when I get in there?
Speaker 3:When, you first walk in, you don't even realize it's a lobby. What do you think it is? When I first walked in, I thought it was just an area of. It was basically like a one or two person customer service desk type thing. Oh, okay, one person on one side, one person on the other side, these Kiosks I think there's four of them and you could check in your room and everything with a little like a larger type iPad touchscreen setup. Okay, I didn't even know it was a lobby. I thought I was walked in the wrong door. Oh, and it was very simplistic, very easy. And then, if you're a hotel guest, you walk out the other side of where that lobby is Right, it was like a little tiny cafe and you walk out that and you're right at the gate to have your stuff gone through for security. Oh sure, and you're right there, like feet.
Speaker 2:Oh, so the hotel enters the park.
Speaker 3:Then, yeah, oh, okay, so you go through security and then they have the new castle hotel, which is next door. But you actually don't have that close of an entrance with the castle hotel. Oh, it's a little further away, it's right next door, like literally you could throw a rock and hit it, okay, but you got to walk outside and then come around and come to the entrance for legal land.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 3:I loved all the theming, all the bills in Miniland, usa and everything but the rides. For me, they're for little guys. They're for little guys. Okay, you, the kids, my wife and I were talking you basically outage it at around 12-ish, 12-ish, it's done, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, all right. Well, you got there. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, there was a lot of fun, that's cool. Yeah, that's great. I took the boys there long ago when it first opened, you know, and I don't remember anything but Chewbacca. I think there was a Chewbacca statue there, possibly. Yeah, there was some Star Wars stuff. There was like the Death Star I remember was there, and there's some other stuff. But yeah, the hotel wasn't there. It was coming soon.
Speaker 3:I have a friend that when she was younger she was a photographer there, so she was showing us some of the pictures that she had from there, the Death Star and such. I'm like whoa, yeah, that's not there, no more. Oh, it's not no.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, this thing was probably. It was big Four foot in diameter.
Speaker 4:It was big.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was all Lego. So anyway, yeah, I just been skiing, I went to Whistler it was great had a snowbird day and been going to Stevens and Mission Ridge and a couple other different places. You know we're going to drive to Park City, utah. It's like a 12 hour drive, so I'm excited about that. Nice, I finally got my legs strong enough to where I can do very simple jumps, which is pretty nice. That's a good feeling, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, so I like that. But I was looking at reading this article about. You know, we grew up with malls. They're a big deal and then they kind of faded away, kind of, kind of sorta. I mean, definitely there's dead malls in America. Pial up, pial up. Yeah, there's a few. There's a few over in kind of like the Forks area too. There's like a couple of dead malls over there. But I was reading this article. Malls rebound from the pandemic and the reasons that they might surprise you are Gen Z hasn't crossed over into the metaverse yet. What the hell is going on, I don't even know.
Speaker 3:You don't know what the metaverse is. Oh, it sounds.
Speaker 2:Trust me, you don't want to know. Is it really a waste of time?
Speaker 3:Social media.
Speaker 2:Social media. And is the metaverse.
Speaker 3:Everyone's getting together online. I forgive me, it may be my age or it may just be the way I'm wired, but I prefer being in person with someone and talking yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, we could just close our eyes and pretend we're wherever you want to be.
Speaker 4:Ooh Hawaii Foundation Nation is proudly sponsored by Jace Technology Solutions. Call Jace Technology Solutions at 253-376-7579 for all your computer repair, it and network solutions.
Speaker 2:Right now we're in Hawaii metaverse. Let's open our eyes Hawaii metaverse.
Speaker 3:Oh shit, but malls are a thing for when I grew up and it's been a while since I was a teenager it was a social meeting place. You went there to hang out with your friends and walk around. You didn't necessarily have to buy anything, but you just walked around, had fun, window shot, grab a pretzel, a drink, depending on the mall. You actually had lunch or dinner there. Right the food court Right yeah. Which literally was a food court, unlike nowadays, where you actually have full-fledged restaurants.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and some of them at least, at the South Center Mall. There's some decent food in there. Oh, we love Montezuma's.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about yeah. Yeah, you know, the original Montezuma's is from Tacoma off of 56th Street in Tyler. Really, yeah, that's the original one. I didn't know that. Then it was Gig Harbor Right, and then I can't remember which came first, silverdale or Tukwila.
Speaker 2:So what's your favorite dish there? Do you guys got a dish?
Speaker 3:I'm a limited palette, as you may remember, man, so I like the steak fajitas. Steak fajita, yeah, yeah, the polar luck, the polar.
Speaker 2:Those are kind of like a show too. When they come out, there's a lot of going on. They bring it out to you.
Speaker 3:It's like crackling, it's not like they used to.
Speaker 2:Oh, really, yeah, it used to be more of a Like a frying pan kind of thing, right, right, like a skillet. Yeah, now it doesn't do that.
Speaker 3:It does, but it's not the same. Okay yeah, the polar laparilla is good too. Okay yeah, that's really good.
Speaker 2:I like those. What's the one where it's like a Like kind of a burrito but it's a corn doughy kind of burrito.
Speaker 3:I just named the two things I eat, so I'm out, I think it's like oh, tamale, that's what it is.
Speaker 2:Tamales, okay, yeah. So tamales are yummy, I like those. But so Gen Z? So we know what Gen Z is Age 16 to 26. That's generation Z. Oh, I feel old now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're Gen, not Z, I'm Gen Dirt. Yeah, you're Gen Dirt, you're Gen Creation. Yeah, they want things. You know. They grew up in the age of. You know, click it and you got it. So what's faster than on your phone, clicking and it gotting it, walking around the mall saying I want that and you walk over and you get it? That's not faster, that's fat. If you order something on Amazon, if you're walking around the mall and you order a pair of shoes on Amazon and then you walk over and buy those, but you're going to get them faster.
Speaker 3:That's what I'm talking about, but you also got to think about the fact you actually have to go to the mall.
Speaker 2:But if you're already there, eating, then you're in the mall
Speaker 2:you can get things If you take away the getting to the mall. All right, take that out of the equation. You're at the mall already. That's what I'm talking about. So we're at the mall already, we want something and we can get it immediately there. So if you go there for food to meet with your friends and then you walk around and you're in need for something that's already being sold at the mall but you can still get online, it seems to be popular for these guys to go there and get it. And what I've noticed for a few years now is, if you go into a, I like to go to the mall and just walk around, but if you go into the mall and you look around, I've always noticed that there's certain areas in each store there's nothing there. Why is that?
Speaker 2:There's nothing there like on the shelves yeah one particular section of the store you go in, like you go into you know the Build-A-Bear. Yes, you know how you are you familiar with the store in Tequila? Yes, okay, so you walk into Build-A-Bear, they have all these different bear options up on the wall and then below them is the bins the bins where it's a bear and their gear, right, and you grab that and then you build it. Well, if you go in there, there's always one gun or two completely gone. You have no idea. Even the model is gone.
Speaker 2:They sell the model on the wall and it's because these Gen Z guys get some shits on hitting the fan in social media world and Ninjago Camo Bear is super popular and they all go in there and they have a boba and then they go in and buy one of these and do their little videos with them or something, and so that's so if you go to these stores, you'll see it's crazy. I've done it like five, six times. Just walk in the store, go into any store. Go in the store, look around. You'll see what's empty. Find out what it was, look it up on social media. It's a goddamn fad Over and over and I was like losing it.
Speaker 2:And so this is what these Gen Z guys are going in there. Then they're all fadding out on one simple thing. The stores are very aware of it. They're stocking these particular items super fast and they're ready to go. And then they go on social media and say, hey, we got the whatever Ninjago Bear. Come check him out. He comes with sparkly panties and then, boom, they're all gone. And that's how I mean I don't know how these stores survive when they're selling. Some of those stores just blows me away. Since my first time going to a mall ever, they got 15 pairs of jeans and that's it in a giant store and I don't know how they make it.
Speaker 3:That's always been a mystery to me. They sold out of everything they already had. They got away for more stock.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's Gen Z, so they're supporting them all. So that's I mean, that's good. I like it's nice to have brick and mortar. I agree. The whole world turned to Amazon. It's gonna be kind of what else? What are we gonna do? Just fill up our gas and drive around in circles? Yeah, just nothing else. There's really nothing else to do.
Speaker 3:My favorite pastime when I was a teenager at the mall. You know what it was People watching.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness, people watching is amazing At the mall. I actually it took a few trips, and I mean quite a few trips but I finally got my wife to sit down with me at Disneyland at the hub on a bench.
Speaker 2:And just check it out.
Speaker 3:And just sit and absorb everything and watch. And while we were doing that, she was relaxing, she was taking it in and she was. It's amazing how you can go and experience something and then experience something different when you do something different there. Oh yeah, and then all of a sudden, this big group of teenagers were walking by having a grand time laughing, joking, dancing a little bit and just walking by and then all of a sudden, one of the teenagers got their shoes stuck in the train tracks right there in the hub and they all were laughing and they left the poor person there, and then they finally came back to help them get their shoe out.
Speaker 3:Nice and it's just. But they were laughing the whole time.
Speaker 2:That's probably a Gen Z, okay, well, no, and they wanted to see him get run over by a train so they could post it.
Speaker 3:Well, it was the carts that are pulled by the horses.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so you're saying a really slow death, yeah, really slow like ah.
Speaker 3:But the point is we got to watch people having fun, right, and even though somebody got stuck, the whole entire teenage group were laughing and joking and having fun. And even when they helped the person get their shoe out from inside the train track thing, right, they're all laughing and giggling, making jokes, got it out. They all continued on their way. Oh yeah, this is missing, right, and you go to the mall or the movie theater, whatever, and you see so many people just get angry for no reason, right, like, bring back being social, bring back being happy, yeah, yeah. And you can't do that sitting at home posting how you didn't like the way someone said something in a post, right, yeah, so the mall is a very social way to do it, right, right.
Speaker 2:Yep, I agree, all right. Well, thanks for joining us as another great episode underneath the airplanes of the runway of SeaTac. Yes, I'm Matthew Cote's Foundation Nation.
Speaker 3:This is Jay Solme Great to be here. Foundation.
Speaker 4:Nation is proudly sponsored by Jay's Technology Solutions, called Jay's Technology Solutions at 253-376-7579, for all your computer repair, IT and network solutions.
