See, I'm more of the mind that they actually don't need to do anything to it. They've been considering replacing it since 2004, according to that Imagineer. For the last 18 years, it's been "on the chopping block." How does doing this actually improve Magic Kingdom? Will the Disney songs really make that much of a difference? Will Grizzly Hall suddenly be jammed for every show? I think we all know the answer is no.
To me it's not assured that changing to more conventional Disney songs will inherently solve the problem. It certainly didn't do wonders for HarmoniUS, as many had seemed to expect. To quote Foxxy of Passport2Dreams, from an article written in 2018 (
full thing here):
Disney, for their part, has decided that the problem with Country Bear Jamboree is Country Bear Jamboree, and various efforts have been initiated in the past 15 years to introduce newer country music, or have the bears sing Disney songs, or turn the thing into "American Idol".
But here's the thing, is that you can't make Country Bear Jamboree into the afternoon parade. It's never going to be a massive crowd pleaser, because by its very nature it's very, very weird. Country Bear Jamboree is a cult favorite, except Disney insists on treating it as a box office disappointment. The problem here isn't Country Bear Jamboree, but Disney.
And again, given that there has apparently been a long-term desire to change this show for some time, as seen in this article, by other posters on this site, on Twitter, etc., I don't genuinely believe anyone can say Disney was giving its best-faith effort to convince people that CBJ was something they needed to see in recent memory. You don't work overtime to convince people to see something that you've decided is a problem.
Perhaps I'll be wrong, and Foxxy will be wrong, and people will lap this change up. Certainly, there are many here who are ready to do so, and clearly some people really do just want to be immersed in familiar Disney IP constantly at the expense of the park's history, theming, unique charms, etc. There has been no shortage of people who didn't 'get' Country Bear Jamboree, even when people went to the parks to experience to them as they are rather than to be bombarded by Disney media constantly at a very expensive Legoland knockoff. But to me this is Disney doing the classic thing they've done repeatedly over the last several decades: ignore things that
actually need fixing in favor of adding IP where it isn't needed and just diluting the experience further.