Originally planned for the proposed Mineral King Resort that never made it thru funding, the ever famous fun, folksy and character driven Audio Animatronic Extravaganza ‘Bear Country Jamboree’ debuted at Walt Disney World (Florida) in 1971 where it’s still delighting audiences. One year later Disneyland got its version of the show in a wilderness themed land all its own. In 2001 Disneyland’s Country Bears were evicted and replaced by a stupid Winnie the Pooh themed ride. In Walt Disney World, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride suffered a similar casualty when it was evicted by too much Poo[h] as well.There’s an old Disney theme par tradition, inspired directly by “Uncle Walt” Disney, which went like this: “If you’re going to replace an older attraction with a newer one make sure it’s more elaborate, more sophisticated, more amazing than the one previous.”. Well said!
But with the new Winnie the Pooh attraction that wasn’t going to be the case. As with most corporate culture decisions at Imagineering over the last decade and a half, this addition to Disneyland USA in Anaheim, CA. was inspired by greed and built on the cheap; an attraction with no interest in entertainment and every interest in cashing in on Pooh Mania, the MBA Bean Counters deciding that the Pooh craze was “trendy for the here and now” and with an attraction like this they could push even MORE crappy Pooh merchandise.
“The Many [Pointless] Adventures of Winnie the Pooh” is little more than a half-assed wait queue and poor quality dark ride passing several Disney Store shop windows geared entirely at showing the newest line of Pooh Merchandise. Forget sophisticated audio animatronics, forget a fully realized dimensional world, forget clear storytelling, forget any creativity or thought provoking anecdotes/foibles. You’re just slogging past wobbly painted wooden flats while sitting inside a giant honeypot that looks like a giant 6 seated carved out turd. Six seats per vehicle, for a ride with VERY low traffic.
Being a stone’s throw from Splash Mountain, everyone is going to want to ride something fun like Splash Mountain because there’s a story, fun characters represented by cutesy animatronics and delightful audio voices that talk, sing, and still delight people of all ages (despite the controversial roots surrounding the ride’s theme)…and there are fun dips, drops, and dives on this classic log flume ride. A dark ride can be fun if there’s a good theme to back it up (i.e. “The Haunted Mansion” or “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride”) but this stupid Winnie the Shit ride has NOTHING memorable about it, other than a sad reminder of its past in Disneyland, USA where the three mounted talking/singing heads Max, Buff, and Melvin are mounted in a surreptitious location partway through the ride (turn around and look up above you when you get to where Winnie the Pooh is pigging out on the honey and saying “What a wonderful dream!”, they are just inside the top of the doorway behind you). Those aren’t THE original three mounted heads from the theater, but replicas from the Mile Long Bar.
The Winnie the Pooh ride is some sort of Disney terminal illness; it’s displacing Toad, one of Fantasyland’s best rides in WDW, and now blowing the Country Bears out of the park in Anaheim. This Pooh disease needs a cure.
The decision to replace the Bear Band with Pooh was one of the most illogical decisions ever made. And the timing was so weird too – that stupid Bear Country movie was opening JUST as they were about to tear the theater down. With a little sprucing up and publicity, the Bear Band Theater could have had a renewed life. I heard from someone that the figures were going to be trashed, and any usable parts would be salvaged for use in the park. I was outraged! To just trash those machines that had entertained millions over the years for salvage was unthinkable to me. Fortunately, after several meetings got arranged with the powerful ones, a great imagineer managed to get the suits to agree to save the cast of one theater, the argument being that they might come in handy someday – either as museum pieces, or to be used in DCA possibly in the future. So… they did save the cast of one theater. This imagineer was at the loading dock at Tujunga the day the Bears came up on the truck from Disneyland, on their way to deep storage – stripped of their fur suits and wrapped in plastic, they looked so forlorn, and sad and really tired. As if they knew nobody cared. Anyway, as far as I know, they are still sitting in a warehouse somewhere just waiting…may they come back someday.
The whole experience is very sad, and makes absolutely no sense. It was as if some vendetta was being carried out against Marc Davis and this was the final blow. What other reason could there be?
I could NOT believe CBJ was ripped out of Disneyland and replaced by that…bear with very little brain. I realize Pooh is a moneymaker but the Bears were part of Walt’s legacy. Ripping those out would be like tearing down the Haunted Mansion, and yet Eisner did it. I heard he was also going to rip out the Lincoln attraction and replace it with…ugh…the MUPPETS! And speaking of which…get rid of those old rags…Disney should be creating, not acquiring, and it certainly doesn’t need a lot of ragged hand puppets in the age of CGI. Why would Disney want Kermit when it has the greatest character ever created - Mickey Mouse?
The final day and the last performance of the Country Bears should have sent a clear signal that with a little re-imagineering, these bears could have kept going and continued to be very popular. The fact that so many fans showed up for that final show, that they had to change the plans and open both theaters, sync the time and run a “final” show in both theaters at the same time. And if you were there, you would know just how loved they were. There is too much Pooh anyway.
That whole Country Bears/Pooh debacle was a travesty and a huge sign that Disneyland had indeed changed for the worse. At the very least, move the Pooh ride to Fantasyland where it will fit in a little more theme wise. I never understood why they dropped an attraction about British characters into a land obviously themed to support it’s Southern/Western surroundings. Pooh just doesn’t work on any level. The Bears where great. Probably the most underrated attraction at DL. I truly miss that show.
I love Marc Davis’ work and it’s a shame that his greatest legacies at Imagineering – America Sings and Country Bear Jamboree at Disneyland are gone. I’d like to see Country Bears revived in Anaheim if possible – and it wouldn’t bug me to see them at DCA. As for Pooh, you can’t argue with his merchandising successes. BUT, what the powers-that-be at that time gave the public-at-large with the Anaheim attraction was crap. And, that’s such a shame because Imagineering had developed a wonderful and beloved high-tech Pooh attraction for Tokyo Disneyland. So, the executives let the dollar rule the day and got far more negative buzz than they would had they chose to do NOTHING. Walt was right … if you’re going to take something away then replace it with something BETTER – something you know in your heart is better. And don’t wait years and years to do so (Disneyland’s CoP, for example). That’s the whole problem in a nutshell and if Walt had followed it, Pirates would be a wax museum walk-through … or, actually, Disneyland would never have been built.
What really makes me mad is that they cut the WDW Florida show down by 5 minutes, and took out some songs that “might offend people”, kowtowing to the PC bullies. The one in Tokyo, Japan still adhered to the original show. It looks and sound great with all new crisp, clean audio and the characters are in excellent, well maintained new[er] condition….but the catch is that it’s mostly dubbed in Japanese. *squeaks stuffed teddy bear*
There’s being timeless, and being dated.
Being timeless would include the Country Bear Jamboree, for its universal appeal for all ages, originality and delightful wittiness, and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, inspired by the delightful characters from the 1949 Disney movie The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and the original 1908 story by Alan Alexander Milne (who ironically created “Winnie the Pooh” as well, but I doubt he would be happy to see his Winnie the Pooh character being so shamelessly bastardized by the New World Order minded modern day Disney corporation).
Being dated is cashing in on and/or contributing to the zeitgeist (being “trendy”, concerned with what’s “in the here and in the now”) utilizing piss-poor execution of tactics in doing so, and Disney has been pulling this since the near mid 1990′s, as far as I can remember. It snowballed at first with dumb “The Disney Afternoon” shows like “Goof Troupe” and “Quack Pack”, but I saw the charming Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse in Adventureland being replaced by….”Tarzan’s Treehouse”, because they wanted to cash in on the Tarzan animated movie that came out at that time. Gross.
It’s time to clean the Poo[h] off the streets of Disney’s resorts and bring the original Country Bears out of retirement for Disneyland, USA and bring back Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride for Walt Disney World. Whether the Country Bears are back at Disneyland or fill a corner in the appropriate backwoods portion of California Adventure, they’re sorely missed; as is Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at WDW in Florida, both of them are a testament to when Imagineers created intelligent whimsy and didn’t scrimp on quality or showmanship.
Special thanks to Mr. Banks and the commenters at “imagineerebirth” over at “blog spot (.com)” on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 at 10:26 AM for inspiring me to write/re-write this essay.
Topic: Disneyland's Country Bears chased out by too much Pooh (Read 914 times)