I watched a couple videos, and I'm honestly surprised that this turned out so good.
This was made by Iger's Disney's Imagineering? The same guys who gave us Tiana's Bayou Adventure, the
Ratatouille ride, and Runaway Railway? I'm shocked. They kept in everything that made the Country Bear Jamboree so great... aside from the songs. I still think having the bears sing Disney songs is a dumb idea, and I sincerely doubt it's gonna result in longer wait times, but most of the songs sounded pretty good. I'm amazed they resisted the urge to throw in any
Encanto or
Princess and the Frog songs. This could've been a lot worse - I was half-expecting one of the bears to sing "Let It Go" and a load of unfunny "meta" humor.
I'd say the parts that worked the least for me were "Try Everything" (the pop style of the song sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the others) and "Fixer Upper" (if only for the part where Buff, Max and Melvin were rattling off lyrics - that was pretty cringe-worthy). I'm glad that Max, Buff and Melvin have a lot of lines, and giving them the "no eating, drinking, or flash photography" spiel was a nice touch. Are you sure they didn't get Peter Reneday back? It sure SOUNDED like Peter as Henry and Max...
What the heck was Buff saying after Trixie's song? I couldn't make it out over the applause.
The imagineers did their homework, and this is a very ‘on brand’ country bears experience which feels like a continuation of the original rather than an ‘Under New Management’ situation. You can tell lots of love and care was put into the show. This is the first ‘reimagining’ in a long time that equals and even improves upon what was there before. Overall very very happy and relieved to see what they did here!
That's basically my thoughts too.
This is why I'll never understand all the people who just constantly blame Bob Iger. Like do you really think Bob Iger truly cares about the price of cupcakes when he has much bigger things to deal with? I don't think Bob Iger is constantly looking at the development and giving notes on the Country Bear musical jamboree. If you truly hate most of the parks and new offerings then the people you should be blaming are Josh D'Amaro and Jeff Vahle. I'm not even saying I like Bob Iger just that the blame is misdirected.
To quote
A Bug's Life: "First rule of leadership - everything is your fault."
This new show is a symptom of just how shallow and limited Disney’s understanding of IP is.
I won't argue with that.
Does anybody know exactly what was done to the animatronics? The new skins and furs are pretty obvious, but I’m wondering what was done mechanically? I’ve heard that they made the transition from hydraulic to electric, and was just wondering how much of the 1971 hardware was left inside of them or if these are essentially new animatronics?
If they are in fact new or mostly new, maybe some duplicates could have been created for whatever DL might have brewing over in Grizzly Peak
Weren't some parts from the scrapped Splash Mountain animatronics used to fix up the originals?