Splash Mountain re-theme announced

[Nubs70]

 

[Matt7187]

What history has been "erased?"

I said before that I'm a US history teacher, and I'm happy to say that we actually get more in-depth on a lot of previously under-discussed aspects of that history now than we did when I was in high school. Looking through my textbooks and sources, at least here in New Jersey, I can pretty safely tell you that nothing's been "erased"; if anything, the books have only gotten more complex and in-depth.

This is a very important distinction. Just because the “history” taught in schools for years is finally being adjusted to accurately show what happened in the past does not mean history is being changed, it is simply being corrected.

 

[brb1006]

They had a bunch of decommissioned animal animatronics laying around after Disneyland closed the show America Sings. Imagineer Tony Baxter proposed taking those animatronics and building a log flume attraction (then called The Zip a Dee River Run) around the music of Song of the South—while the movie was controversial, Zip a Dee Doo Dah has always been a hit among the public. Michael Eisner brought his son, Breck, to work one day and when Breck came across the Splash Mountain model, he loved it. The rest as the say is history.

^^At least, that’s the legend behind the ride, anyway. @marni1971 can correct the record if I’m wrong.

Jim Hill also shared that story in one of his recent Disney Dish episodes with @lentesta.

 

[note2001]

Honestly, if Disney is finally so afraid of the racial backlash from this story that many of our youth don't even know that they're re-theming it, then they'll surely be dropping the hosting of any vloggers who have had a history of making fun of other cultures. Right? (talking to myself here)

Me replying to myself: Don't bet on it. Disney loves those high views and free promotion more than anything. As long as those vloggers have deleted their questionable content then it's as though it never happened.

 

[WDWmazprty]

BZZZT...

Sorry, you don't get to skip the thread and throw up a word wall. If you read the thread you would know your first sentence was terribly false and debunked several times.

Start again.

So sorry, actually not slave times, but almost just as bad. Yes, the country was trying to turn things around at this time but it wasn't really a huge change...hence the reason why people are still upset about it. Plus a lot of the people who have been complaining about the movie and the ride are thinking slavery or slave times anyway

Doesn't matter....slavery, Reconstruction, racial inequality...it was a bad time.

 

[TJinSF]

I agree with you mostly. I just think anyone with a bit of common sense would KNOW that times back then were actually not HAPPY GO LUCKY.....that it is a MOVIE. I'm not saying YOU think this way...but do you get what I mean?

I do. Thanks for taking the time to talk it out. Sorry I was crabby to start. I think all that's going on is getting to us. Or to me, anyway. I wish there was more time, and more people willing, to have these kinds of conversations in society overall.

I should say that I still understand why folks want to respond powerfully to what that movie says. Art, and what we derive from it, says a lot. I see both sides. What I know for sure is that I'll miss this ride and that I need to give my Serenity Prayer beads more of a workout!

 

[RoysCabin]

That’s just simply not true. Slavery actually held the South’s economy back and in any case the south was totaled during the Civil War.

There's a nuance to that: the South was the nation's economic engine through its earliest days, especially once the cotton gin was patented, though even beforehand the richest men at the Constitutional Convention were almost universally slaveholding plantation owners. By the 1850s, however, the Industrial Revolution was well underway in America, and the entrenched plantation interests of the South basically worked to keep the factories from spreading into their regions, a factor that ensured the North would have major infrastructure and supply advantages in the ensuing war, that much is true.

However, the South still stood to benefit from slavery in two ways: one was through the practice of filibusting, in which pro-slavery Americans traveled to other western hemisphere countries, typically places that had only recently shaken off Spanish colonial authority, and attempt coups to install pro-American governments, and from there legalize slavery in these countries to create, as it was called, a dreamed of "Empire of Cotton", that would stretch from the border of the Mason-Dixon line all the way down to South America. Thankfully, that vision never came to pass outside of the pro-slavery land-grab that was the Mexican War.

Still, even during the war the South's cotton nearly won it a major advantage, as being the world's main provider of affordable cotton almost drew Great Britain, among other nations, to side with the Confederacy and actively take up arms against the United States. One of the many tactical decisions behind the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation was to put it in writing that the war was now explicitly about slavery, a move that forced Britain and other European powers, having recently ended slavery within large tracts of their own empires, to pull back their potential support.

 

[the.dreamfinder]

 

[Mr.Stang19]

What about every other minority group in the country? Don't they have a say? Do you really want to find out what Dominicans, Haitians, Puerto Ricans, Cambodians, Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans, Cubans think of African Americans?

You honestly think 'white' people are the problem? White people are the only 'true' racists? Lol

Some of you really need to get out more.

My understanding is that Haitians and Dominicans are the same, because they come from the same island, and the ones living in the US are part of the African American community.

 

[Figments Friend]

It doesn’t need changing. If they want PatF build something new.

Or spend the budget where it’s really needed and fix what’s broken elsewhere.

Idiots.

I wonder how well it’s diverting interest from other items.

Yep.

This #2



Absolutely idiotic move.


-

 

[Astrotrain]

It's a racist ride. That cute, endearing, catchy song "Zip a dee doo dah" is based off of racist black faced minstrel shows from the 1830's. Imagine people defending a ride based off of a movie that showed blacks as lazy and dumb. Imagine being black and riding a ride that glorifies it.

Look up minstrel shows. Do research. It's not okay and splash mountain should have never been approved in 1989 to begin with.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Why stop there you "woke" Disney tools? Get rid of every President from the HOP except for Obama!

You know that the HoP intro film was changed to address the horrors of slavery and its long lasting impact on our culture, right? I'm mean, you're a Disney fan posting in a WDW forum, so surely you remember that HoP was already changed to address systemic oppression because of our history of owning people becuase of the color of their skin, and how we need to keep fighting for equality and civil rights of all people, right?

 

[rnese]

Oh, burrrrn.

Technically, they did per a French mandate. But there's something like 90K people still enslaved in that country today.

Now, let's talk about China. Will Disney take a stand against China's treatment of the Uighyrs?

No, didn't think so.

China...Germany...Columbus was Italian, so Italy...Canada displaced a bunch on indigenous people...Great Britain was involved in slave trade...If we're going to be WOKE, let's be WOKE! How stereotypical is the Polynesian Village Resort? What, you think all they do is have luaus and wear leis?

 

[DisneyOutsider]

It’s a log flume ride? If you have stepped foot through Disney gates, let alone ride SM you are clearly a racist. Either that or your argument falls apart.

I actually love the ride and want it to stay, but I'm not as opposed to a re theme as many here are .

The ride is void of the film's most objectionable material and I don't think there's a strong enough association with the film to justify destroying one of Imagineering's greatest attractions ever .

However, you can at the same time acknowledge that the source material (much of which did not transfer to the ride) was hurtful to many Americans. It's important to acknowledge that, and it's shameful to see people deny it.

I'm anxious to see what your next leap in logic is.. you're very entertaining

 

[WDW Pro]

Because social media is the most powerful force on the planet now and if something controversial on there applies to big companies, you can be darn sure they'll address it. If not for social media, we'd be riding SM and singing Zippady Do Dah for a long long time.

You're halfway there. Social Media is only powerful in that if it proposes something that helps Chinese interests, corporations support it because the Chinese market and quasi slave labor there enrich the corporations. This then makes the internet warriors feel emboldened, when politically they're not.

This is getting crazy. ToT was always my breaking point, but if they actually retheme CoP, I dont know if I want to go anymore, seriously.

Queue people saying "good, more room for me!"

The plan is to close CoP after some time, operate it seasonally, then bulldoze it a la Stitch.

 

[seascape]

I mean... look at how many adults in this thread are gutted over a 1946 movie & 1989 ride... if it still means so much to them, I'm sure PATF will for years to come. Especially for young girls who see tiana as the only princess who looks like them.

I agree this debate is strange. Disney made the mistake years ago using Song of The South. I love the ride but certainly understand the argument against it and agree the time has come to remove it snd replace it with Tiana. I hope we can all agree with this one thing and that is thanks to Splash Mountain Tiana will get a great ride and a very long one too. The art looks nice even if it's out of place at WDW, but so be it. I expect Disney to go all out for this to be a great ride.

 

[CAlvares]

Education and understanding will do more then tearing down statues and retheming rides

Nobody has ever entered this ride and come out the other side racist (unless they were before)

honest question:

Why not both? Why can’t education and understanding lead to tearing down statues that honor factually racist people and retheming rides that have racist origins?

And while I agree with your point that no one came out of this ride racist unless they were before, I can imagine that a group of people did leave feeling upset/hurt by it.

 

[Cesar R M]

What history has been "erased?"

I said before that I'm a US history teacher, and I'm happy to say that we actually get more in-depth on a lot of previously under-discussed aspects of that history now than we did when I was in high school. Looking through my textbooks and sources, at least here in New Jersey, I can pretty safely tell you that nothing's been "erased"; if anything, the books have only gotten more complex and in-depth.

I'm talking about groups trying to sanitize everything and claim like nothing happened.

 

[WDWmazprty]

My understanding is that Haitians and Dominicans are the same, because they come from the same island, and the ones living in the US are part of the African American community.

No. Haitians and Dominicans are not the same. Totally different.

 

[SteamboatJoe]

Well, yeah: again, the bulk of America's wealth was built on a race-based labor system and genocide of the native population. So yeah, racism seeps through the pores of the entire culture.

As were most first-world countries. I don't say that to refute your points, I just think America sometimes gets unfairly described, intentional or otherwise, as being unique in this aspect. Pretty much every major civilization came about as a result of brutal conquest and subjugation. Not really the point of contention here, I know.