Carlye Wisel

Carlye Wisel is a theme park journalist and travel expert and the host of Very Amusing. Follow her on Twitter here. Follow her on Instagram here.

Kindly introduce yourself and tell us what you do!
Hi! I’m a journalist and host of Very Amusing with Carlye Wisel, an enthusiastically reported theme park podcast. Each week, we give listeners a deeper look at these spaces and their impact on culture, ranging from secrets about Disney’s Star Wars-themed land and a functioning recreation of Disneyland in Minecraft to a Los Angeles institution’s unexpected ties to Walt Disney. Featuring in-depth interviews with everyone from Malcolm Gladwell to Miss Piggy, we’ve got something for all kinds of theme park fans!

You are always the first person to hear about Disney news your listeners are dying to know about. How do you stay in the loop?
To do this job you have to be obsessive. News travels fast and wide because it’s tied to some of the most popular vacation destinations on earth — which also happen to be owned by major media conglomerates — so it’s pretty non-stop, but I love it. 

I have a network of colleagues and friends and tipsters who keep me in the loop, but in reality, collaboration is key to keeping folks informed on everything that’s happening in the theme park space. You can’t fact-check and cover it all yourself, and since my only goal is to ensure correct information makes its way to readers and listeners, sharing other reporters’ great findings helps us all collectively cover these locations as best as possible.

There are tons of Disney podcasts but none are quite like yours. (I know yours isn't a Disney podcast but you cover Disney better than anyone.) How is Very Amusing different than the Disney podcasts that have been around forever?
Oh wow, thank you! I’ll start by saying there are a handful that I love — Podcast The Ride, Disney Dish, Dis Unplugged and D23 Inside Disney to name a few — but Very Amusing was always intended to be a space for the kinds of stories I found myself unable to report at my magazine outlets.

People reading this newsletter may not realize it, but Disney’s massive fan community has yielded a robust podcast space packed with experts who’ve been putting in the work for years. Most focus on the week’s news and do an exceptional job of covering it, so I was reluctant to enter the arena for a long, long time. As I immersed myself even deeper within this world, I realized audio could open me up to a kind of storytelling I hadn't been able to do thus far and decided to take the plunge.

More than anything, though, Very Amusing is just an extension of myself. Each episode has a main “feature story”, followed by a Q&A with calls to my Churros Hotline (747-Churros, yes it’s real!) and, at the end, a voicemail from my mom about the previous week’s episode. The format is very natural and fell into place on its own, and I’m exceedingly happy with where it’s at in our second year.

One of my favorite moments in podcast history is when you were on Greetings from Somewhere talking about the enlightened nature of adult Disney fans. Can you explain that here? They don't believe me when I say it because they know I'm biased. 
It’s interesting, because I began this career as an outsider who didn’t know much about Disney fans and theme park culture, and now I’m as inside as one can be. Having seen it on both sides, I will never understand why adult Disney fans are so discriminated against — truly, they are — when they are tapped into a superior way of living that many others will sadly never experience. Adult Disney fans have allowed public displays of unbridled joy back into their lives, something society has squeezed out of us by the time we’re grown, and that innate knowledge of what makes them happy and the ability to publicly celebrate that is something I’m so grateful to be a part of. 

At the end of the day, if people allow others to passionately root for a sports team, why is it weird that someone could enjoy a fireworks show? Or the nostalgia of a decades-old parade? Or waving back at an anthropomorphic mouse? I’m proud to be a part of a community where people allow themselves to be outwardly happy, I never want to be on the outside of that again.

What kind of team do you work with to make the show happen?
I’m lucky to have a great team at Acast and ICM for the big-picture proceedings, but week to week it’s all me. I work with an editor, Jeff Fox, who is fabulous and immensely helpful, but for episode topics to interviews to the script and order of each episode, it’s this gal, hunched over my desk with a handful of strawberry sour belts, making it happen while further solidifying my garbage posture :)

What's something you've learned about the world by making Very Amusing?
Theme parks are at the forefront of multi-disciplinary technology and being able to freely ask questions about the basics of how things are made and share answers with my listeners is a gift I’ll never not be appreciative of.

Typically, for a print story, you’d be writing about something new or noteworthy, more top-level stuff. On Very Amusing, I can center entire interviews around things that myself and other fans are curious about, whether it’s learning how drone shows work or landing an interview with the guy who creates all those character costumes.

As a frequent visitor to Disney and Universal theme parks, I’d really grown accustomed to taking these experiences for granted, but even something like Audio-Animatronic figures of Star Wars characters — when you see it in person, you’ll think “wow, incredible!” and move on. Very Amusing has given me the platform to learn how and why things like that were created, and allows me to appreciate the sheer work, technology and artistry in an entirely new way.

Thanks, Carlye!