Matilda says: “Duluth is to Ticket to Ride what Madagascar is to Pandemic.”

Just played Ticket to Ride for the first time last week. She is indeed referencing the game (which is pretty fun, I guess).

Funny thing about its Duluth reference, is that Duluth's location on the game's "map" is more akin to the Twin Cities Metro Region. I am not enough of a geography buff to know if the other cities are in their correct locations, but that one seems a bit too far off.

Almost every rail game I've seen has Duluth on the US map, and 90% of those have it in the completely wrong area.

I was just looking this up a few days ago and came across this tidbit about how Duluth ended up in Minneapolis.

"Originally Alan's prototype used Minneapolis, but it was clear that historically Duluth was a more important train center at the turn of the century, so we made the decision to change it. However, once we began to adjust the board to move the city to it's proper place on the map, it caused a chain reaction of misplaced cities, or would have forced us to add different route lengths. Unfortunately, due to production schedules the cards (using Duluth) had already gone into production in advance of the board and it was too late to change them. Rather than unbalancing the game play by changing the route lengths between cities, we felt that the best solution was to keep the inaccurate city location."

I've played Pandemic, but don't get the Madagascar reference. Is it in the wrong spot?

I thought the Pandemic and Madagascar references were movies.

Madagascar is the holy grail in Pandemic. Trying to get it infected with the disease before it shuts all its borders and starts its treatment plans is very difficult.

Now I'm going to have to watch Pandemic! Thanks  Tamara!

A few online communities have running jokes about Madagascar in the Flash version of Pandemic. Just do an image search for Madagascar pandemic (SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING!).