I think at the end of the day that as long as Disney is unwilling to show the movie, the ride is going to bear the brunt of any criticisms that the IP faces. Are we really surprised that they’re ditching a ride based on a movie they’ve actively avoided for decades?
Exactly. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but it's a bit galling to read some of the comments on this thread and the associated tunnel vision.
Is Splash Mountain a great ride that's richly themed? Absolutely. It's on the short list of being one of the best rides in all of WDW.
Is Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah a great song? Absolutely. It's an iconic Disney song.
However, we need to weigh those positive attributes with the reality of today's world and what people are actually arguing about here. Splash Mountain isn't intended to be a presentation of U.S. history like there is at the Hall of Presidents or American Adventure. Going even further, it's not a cultural work that arguably can be presented in historical context like Gone with the Wind or even The Song of the South movie itself. Instead, Splash Mountain at its core is a pure thrill ride. This isn't the type of ride where we should be needing a historical context disclaimer about the Disney IP source material. Instead, this is the type of ride that should be *completely* free of controversy. Disney has tons of IP that it can use... but people are going to go to battle for the one IP that Disney itself is openly and unabashedly embarrassed to have shown anywhere else? Really?!
It's a bit disingenuous to argue that the fact that ride itself isn't superficially racist means that society will give it a pass despite the underlying source material being deemed to be racist (and once again, that's not the "woke" crowd saying that The Song of the South is racist, but Disney's very own stance toward the film for many years). That's like arguing that you can have a non-racist ride based on Amos & Andy or other past objectionable material. Just because that line of thinking was justifiable 30-plus years ago when Splash Mountain was first designed and opened doesn't mean that's justifiable today.
The fact that many us may personally love Slash Mountain as a feat of Disney Imagineering (and I'm one of them) doesn't mean that we can ignore the core underlying problem with the Disney IP source material. To be sure, this doesn't mean that there aren't times where controversial viewpoints *should* be disseminated. For instance, I completely 100% disagreed with Sen. Tom Cotton's recent opinion piece in the New York Times about using the military against protesters... but I also completely 100% disagreed with how the New York Times fired their opinion page editor in connection with the backlash toward Cotton's op-ed. The viewpoint of a sitting Senator on a current topic where he has a lot of influence shouldn't be shut down simply because many of us disagree with it. In fact, that's exactly why such viewpoint should be published in the first place.
The theming of Splash Mountain is an entirely different category, though. Ultimately, this is a pure thrill ride in a Disney-owned theme park where much of the entire premise of visiting is to get *away* from the real world to the point where it's literally called Walt Disney *World*. If the Disney-owned IP source material is controversial (and it's pretty difficult to argue that The Song of the South isn't controversial considering that Disney itself *openly* wishes that it would go away), then it's a perfectly reasonable stance that Disney would want to remove any hint of that controversy. Disney has more IP than it knows what to do with and, ultimately, Splash Mountain in whatever form will still be a pure thrill ride. Whether people are worried about whether the updated theming will be high quality is a valid concern, but that certainly doesn't justify keeping what much of the world finds to be objectionable material in place.
To be honest, it's pretty much a no-brainer if you're running Disney. Why the heck would it protect the theme of Splash Mountain if it doesn't even want to acknowledge the existence of The Song of the South in any other form? The only surprise to me is that it hadn't happened already.
