Splash Mountain Endangered?

[Zippa D Doodah]

This is neither news nor a rumor... more like idle speculation, and I knew it was not a good fit on the TPAS forum. With the current movement in America to do away with statues and various cultural symbols that hearken back to the Civil War, particularly the confederacy, does anyone else wonder if Splash Mountain might be on the chopping block?

I read over the weekend about an outcry against a screening of "Gone With the Wind" at a Memphis film festival. Preceding that was ESPN's bizarre replacement of Asian-American sportscaster Robert Lee. You get the trend... I wonder if Disney might do some soul-searching, so to speak, about Splash's source material and somehow distance itself from it. Almost all of the "Brer" characters seem to invite unexpected interpretations. As DS17 and I were riding Splash last week we speculated on what Disney could do with a longish upcoming refurb.

Surely no big changes in theming, but these days it sure makes a person wonder.

 

[ShadeDK]

No. The source material for Splash Mountain has nothing to do with the antebellum South and goes back to African legends. It's why the ride has survived long after Song of the South was permanently retired to the vault. That's not to say it couldn't get caught up in the current wave - but we're going pretty far down the rabbit hole and into a place where logic has ceased to exist if Splash Mountain is being thrown out as a symbol of intolerance.