Disneyland’s Splash Mountain marks 30 wet years on Wednesday, July 17
Disney Imagineer Tony Baxter says the idea for the plume ride came to him while he was stuck in rush-hour traffic.
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>>Baxter remembers being stuck in rush hour traffic on the way to Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale when he first conceived the idea of reusing dozens of animatronic creatures from the aging America Sings! attraction that had been highlighted during the nation’s Bicentennial inside the former Carousel of Progress building but had since become tired and less popular.
“People had kind of had enough of it,” Baxter said. “But there were something like 90 creatures in there that were beautifully designed.”
He recalled that Dick Nunis, then-president of Walt Disney Attractions, wanted to build a flume ride that would follow up on the huge success of Pirates of the Caribbean.
Baxter’s idea, to reuse animated characters and stories from Song of the South worked because it was Southern themed, matching the adjacent New Orleans Square, also provided the flume ride that Nunis wanted.
“By the time I got to work, I had a story we could work around,” Baxter recalled. “I was as giddy as a little kid.”
The team, including project manager Bruce Gordon and show designer John Stone, set to work immediately on the idea, which would take four years to come to fruition.
Baxter remembers successfully pitching the ride to Michael Eisner — and his 14-year-son Breck — only a few days after Eisner took over the reins of the Walt Disney Company.<<