Country Bear Chsitmas Edition any Hope??

[Pumbas Nakasak]

Cape of Good and Bob

 

[WDW1974]

I realize that those nostalgic glasses are rose colored, but does anyone remember the actual quality of the show? The pacing of the original was completely undone and it was almost as disconcerting as the summer layover. The idea that the bears are competing for the audiences attention is done away with, and the building climax that ultimately ends with everyone trying to drown out Big Al is completely missing. In it's place, there was just a bunch of Carols sang by some talking bears. Also, there is yet another attempt to make a classic attraction more edgy with some modern Christmas songs including Liver Lips (as an Elvis Impersonator) singing "Rock and Roll Santa."

That's your opinion. Guests seemed to love the Christmas and Summer Vacation shows just as much, if not more, than the original CBJ.



I did too.



It was great when you got three maintained shows a year instead of one creaky show 365 days.

The reason the vacation hoedown was cut was because attendence was bad. The Christmas show got cut because of some copywright issues with the songs. (I had not heard which songs specifically, but Wikipedia seems to blame "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer") And even if that is Disney Spin and the cuts were purely budgetary, the sad fact remains that the shows were not as popular and not as entertaining as the original. At best they were harmless diversions, but at worst they exemplified the faux hip, edgy attitude that imagineering had for a period of time. Also, the great Marc Davis who designed this attraction and gave Walt his famous "Last Laugh", never approved of the overlays.

Do you have facts to back up any of that?



I knew OPs folks back when they had the summer show and I never heard of any dropoffs in attendance at all. Just on the face of it, it makes little sense since it played during the most wretched time of year weather-wise. In other words, when people would head inside just to escape the heat, humidity, sun and rain.



And the 'rights issue' over holiday music has never been uttered by anyone but folks on the Internet. I can't say it isn't true for certain (say like the Chinese Theater BS that gets spewed online in a similar fashion), but no one at Disney has ever told me this. It just took on a life of its own. When MK stopped showing the Christmas show, OPs people told me that Phil Holmes and Erin Wallace simply wanted to save the conversion costs (ridiculously low, most people pay more for a used auto).



As to Marc Davis, I have no idea what his opinions may or may not have been. And while I respect the man's work greatly, he wasn't always right. He hated Splash Mountain, for example, because it 'stole' his America Sings AAs. He dispised BTMRR because it was chosen over his Western River Expedition/Thunder Mesa concept. And he is actually said to have liked MK's Pirates over DL's.

 

[DisneyNut2007]

Sorry to bump a somewhat old thread, but I thought you folks should know that there's now a Facebook group dedicated to making peoples' voices heard over the absence of the Xmas show and to write lots of letters to get WDW to bring it back.

So, if you're on Facebook, please don't hesitate to join. The link is:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=178840083906&ref=ts

Recommended addresses to send your letters to can be found in the group information section.