"Mooncation" is a SpongeBob SquarePants episode from season 8. In this episode, Sandy takes SpongeBob to the moon for a vacation.

Characters

• SpongeBob SquarePants
• Patrick Star
• Monkey agents ^{(single appearance)}
• Sandy Cheeks
• Incidentals
  • Lou ^{(dark orange; named Mr. Bakerman)}
  • Steve
• Grandpa Cheeks ^(mentioned)
• Ernest Borgnine ^(cameo)
• Carol ^(mentioned)
• Carol's father ^(mentioned)
• Fuel gauge ^{(single appearance)}

Synopsis

In the beginning of the episode, SpongeBob and Patrick go to Sandy's treedome, but are knocked aside by monkeys leaving her home. They hold a slide carousel, mentioning they confiscated it. SpongeBob and Patrick ask Sandy what is going on, and she says she has a copy of the slide carousel to show them. The show begins.

In the show, SpongeBob meets Sandy, who is preparing for a trip to the moon. She asks him to help her with her luggage, but he runs off to the bakery. He tries to take a number, but gets tangled in the tickets from the dispenser, to the baker's annoyance. The baker asks for "Number 12," and SpongeBob gives him his ticket. Through gritted teeth, the irritated baker asks him what he would like. SpongeBob says he would like a bon voyage sheet cake with "yummy letters." He asks the baker to write, "Have fun on the moon," but thinks of what would rhyme with moon (goon, rune, noon, tune), while the baker angrily suggests loon, but he goes with "See you soon." He takes the cake to Sandy's, but her rocket just started the countdown. It lifts its ladder, but SpongeBob leaps on, and into the ship. Sandy is annoyed, and says she must adjust for the newly added weight of SpongeBob. The ship blasts off, and soon they are in space. While in there, SpongeBob presents her with the cake. She warns him that food that is not contained will fall apart in a zero-gravity environment, which the cake promptly does. She says everything will be fine unless it gets into the vent, and once again, the cake does just that. She climbs into a special suit and goes out to remove the cake from the vents. While standing out there, she takes a bit of the cake and says it could use "more nuts." She returns to the ship, and the moon is getting closer. Sandy picks a crater as a good place to land the ship.

When they exit the ship, Sandy sandboards on the moon, showing off many of her moves, such as the "Flippity-Doo Dah," the classic Texas tail grab (where Sandy grabs her tail to the shape of Texas with a star on it), and the 7-20 nut-job (where she slices a moon rock to an acorn, and eats it), including one where she lies on Saturn's rings; the "Tour de Saturn."

When it is SpongeBob's turn to sandboard, he floats away, since he is too light in the moon's gravity. Sandy uses a lasso made with a rope and a moon rock, and tells SpongeBob to grab it. He does, and falls to the moon. While screaming and holding onto the moon rock, he shows amazing skills, which impresses Sandy. SpongeBob tries again, but this time, his board crashes into the fuel tank, causing it to leak. Sandy pulls SpongeBob back to the ship, telling him they need to return home while there is still enough fuel left. They manage to make it back to Earth, but the steep dive means they will turn into a giant fireball, which causes SpongeBob to panic. Sandy goes outside to "grab this bull by the horns" and lassos the ship, pulling it out of its dive. It flies over Bikini Bottom, doing loop-de-loops, and eventually crashing to the ground. SpongeBob sees an unconscious Sandy lying on the ground and tearfully apologizes for ruining her vacation. Sandy tells him he did not ruin her vacation; she had a great time. She plans on taking him with her to Mars next, then jokingly suggests he bring her cakes more often, and they laugh, as the episode ends.

Production

This episode was confirmed on June 6, 2011.^[3]

Promotional art

Storyboards

Paintings

Music

( ‣ ) Production music

( • ) Original music

( ◦ ) SpongeBob music

 ‣ Paranormal [#64] - Harry Lubin [Title card]
 • Sponge Burgler - Nicolas Carr ["We got the slides, sir."]
 • Secret Agent 00 SquarePants - Nicolas Carr [Sandy takes SpongeBob and Patrick inside her treedome]
 • SpongeBob Flashback Vibes - Nicolas Carr [Start of Sandy's story]
 ‣ Against All Odds - Paul Lawler [Rocket revealed]
 • Steel Licks 40 - Jeremy Wakefield ["I'll be right back!"]
 • You're Nice - Sage Guyton, Jeremy Wakefield [SpongeBob buys a cake]
 ‣ Cosmos Adventure - John Fox [Rocket launch]
 ‣ Missile Disaster - John Fox [Cake disintegrates]
 ‣ Beyond the Galaxy - Larry Hochman [Sandy's special spacesuit]
 • Origami - Nicolas Carr [Origami]
 • Star Trekkers 1 - Nicolas Carr, Steve Marston [Rocket lands on the moon.]
 ‣ Aquarium - Eric Gemsa, Bernard Rabaud [Camp set up on the moon]
 ‣ The Grinder [#10] - Rolf Krueger [Sandy doing moon crater boarding]
 ‣ The Grinder [#30] - Rolf Krueger [Sandy lands down]
 ‣ Moon Walk - John Fox ["Nothing like extreme sports in zero gravity."]
 ‣ Alien Spacecraft A - Gregor F. Narholz [SpongeBob floats away]
 • Monster Wave No Sax - Nicolas Carr, Fabian Fernandez [SpongeBob grabs a rock and falls]
 • Soap Opera Scene 1 - Hiram Titus [Patrick watching TV]
 • Monster Wave No Sax - Nicolas Carr, Fabian Fernandez [SpongeBob jumps from the satellite/"Watch this, Sandy."]
 • Star Trekkers 2 - Nicolas Carr, Steve Marston [Leak in fuel tank.]
 • Steel Licks 54 - Jeremy Wakefield [SpongeBob takes a picture]
 • Star Trekkers 3 - Nicolas Carr, Steve Marston [Rocket leaves moon.]
 • DT 07 ROBOTS ruff#174 - Nicolas Carr, Steve Marston [Empty fuel tank.]
 ‣ Seven Seas - Oded Tzur [Sandy lassos the nose of the rocket]
 ‣ The Assignment - Gregor F. Narholz [Rocket crash lands]
 ‣ Horror Cue 1 A - Gregor F. Narholz ["Oh my gosh!"]
 • Steel Licks 18 - Jeremy Wakefield ["I'm sorry I ruined your vacation to the moon."]
 • Bikini Bottom Bound - Nicolas Carr, Sage Guyton, Jeremy Wakefield [Ending]

Release

Distribution

Format	Title	Region
DVD	SpongeBob's Runaway Roadtrip	United States, Europe, Latin America, Australia, Japan
	The Complete Eighth Season	United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia
Box set	The SpongeBob SquarePants Collection	Australia
	3 DVD Value Pack	Australia
	The SpongeBob SquarePants 8 Season DVD Collection	Germany and Australia
	The Seventh & Eighth Seasons	United States
	The Next 100 Episodes	United States
	The Best 200 Episodes Ever	United States
	The Best 300 Episodes Ever	United States
Digital release	On the Road	Global
	SpongeBob SquarePants Vol. 13	Global
LeapFrog	Bikini Bottom Getaways	United States

Trivia

General

• This episode was available on the SpongeBob's Runaway Roadtrip DVD, released earlier in 2011, before it aired on American television.

• When SpongeBob sings "Going to the Moon! Moon trip!" repeatedly, it is a reference to "Sandy's Rocket," when SpongeBob sings "Going to the Moon! Moon ride!" repeatedly.
• This is the first episode with Vincent Waller credited as a writer/storyboard director since the season 4 episode "Skill Crane," and was also the first of two episodes that he and Sean Charmatz worked on together.
• According to Vincent they were short on writers at the time. ^[4]
• This is the fourth of the five episode SpongeBob's Runaway Roadtrip miniseries on Nickelodeon.
• This is the fourth appearance of primates on the show. The first was "I Had an Accident," the second was "Chimps Ahoy," and the third was "Friend or Foe."
• Earth stays the same in the background. In fact, it was the famous image of Earth, The Blue Marble, taken by the Apollo 17 crew, that SpongeBob "held."

• When Sandy is moon-crater-boarding, the music is similar to the music in "Prehibernation Week."
• The beginning of this episode is very similar to "Sandy's Rocket," only the rocket is brown and the one on "Sandy's Rocket" was white. The rocket bared some resemblance to a U.S Taurus 1, Minotaur I by Northrop Grumman (formerly Orbital ATK) or Italian Vega rocket (ESA's solid fueled rocket next to the Ariane 5 and Soyuz, which is suspended due to Russia's invasion/war with Ukraine) with first stage removed.
• This is the third episode where Nickelodeon Animation Studio has appeared in the series, the first being "The Sponge Who Could Fly" and the second being "Truth or Square."

• There is a brief scene at Nickelodeon Animation Studios where a man is seen standing at the front entrance as he looks up high in the sky to see a small rocket passing by. That man is Ernest Borgnine, the voice actor of Mermaid Man. This is his only physical appearance in the series, as he died shortly after the episode aired. Despite this, he is uncredited.
  • Additionally, a year after the episode aired, the Nickelodeon Animation Studio redesigned to stay consistent with the 2009 logo remodel.
• This is the second time within the vacation mini-series that SpongeBob flies near the moon, the first being "A SquarePants Family Vacation." The family boat-mobile flies into a crescent moon and crashes into a cow jumping over it.
• This episode was rated PG in Canada.^{[citation needed]}
• When SpongeBob was standing on the moon, he did not float away (which is in tune with the laws of physics as the moon does have gravity) but when he was about to "moonboard" he needed a rock to hold him down, then after he crashed into the rocket he did not need the rock.
• Sandy mentions the episode title when she says, "Looks like you're going on a mooncation!"
• In this episode, SpongeBob says he does not know what corn is, despite the fact that he had corn in his mouth in the previous episode.
• During the A Whole Day That's Out of this World marathon, this episode was paired with "Sandy's Rocket" as they are both space-themed episodes.^[5]

• In a deleted scene, Tom Kenny voiced a button in the rocket ship that said "Sorry." The "sorry" line was listed in the credits as if it were a character name. One of the episode's writers Vincent Waller said in a tweet that he does not remember this scene in August 2017.^[6]

Cultural references

• The satellite SpongeBob hits is a doctored image of the International Space Station's Russian Orbital Segment's Zarya module, Zarya is Russian for "dawn," and is the first module of the ISS being based on the TKS spacecraft (Транспортный корабль снабжения, Transport Supply Spacecraft), the next being the Russian Zvezda module (whose design lineage thus extends back to the original Salyut/Almaz stations), and the United States' Unity module.

Errors

• When Sandy's rocket is activated, Sandy's suitcases are not there, but once Sandy shows up, all her suitcases are there.
• Sandy and SpongeBob are both at the middle of the rocket when they board, but are shot up from the bottom at liftoff.

• When SpongeBob says, "Oh gee Sandy. I don't know," SpongeBob blinks his eyes but his eyelashes are still seen.

• When SpongeBob and Sandy are quickly flying back to earth, the fuel gauge in the background is incorrectly colored blue (as it is colored tan during the close-up of it being sentient).

• The image of Earth seen is reversed before Sandy lasso's the front of the ship.

Videos

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
French	Les vacances lunaires de Sandy	Sandy's Lunar Vacation
German	Der Schwamm im Mond	The Sponge on the Moon
Hungarian	Holdutazás	Flight to the Moon
Italian	Vacanze sulla luna	Vacation on the Moon
Russian	Луноотпуск Lunootpusk	Mooncation
Spanish (Latin America)	La lunavacación	The Mooncation
Spanish (Spain)	Vacaciones en la luna	Vacation on the Moon

References

1. ^ https://ia601001.us.archive.org/0/items/nick-ca-logs/NICK_1111.log
2. ^ Nickelodeon UK & Ireland Confirm "SpongeBob's Runaway Roadtrip" Will Show From August 19th! - NickUKHub
3. ^ https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=198&ti=226,198&SEQ=20231112003139&Search%5FArg=SpongeBob%20SquarePants&Search%5FCode=TALL&CNT=25&PID=M5ZasKK2JtQAF4sbjmVr_kf7H6WxA&SID=2
4. ^ https://bsky.app/profile/vincentwaller.bsky.social/post/3mb5547ogzc2f
5. ^ Nickstory - September 3, 2012
6. ^ Vincent Waller on Twitter