Splash Mountain to become Princess and the Frog ride

[DGsAtBLT]

Let’s not hide behind kids when it’s primarily grown adults who are taking issue with the change and saying terrible things.

Kids are capable of understanding and adapting way more than we give them credit for.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

It’s good your kid likes that movie. I like the Simpsons, but I still prefer the Back to the Future ride. This redo has to be good.

I do agree that the need to do a good job. If it is a really cheap overlay (I don't think it will be, but if) I can see a lot of people unhappy that it became a "lesser" ride regardless of subject matter

 

[firefly_ris]

YouTube was loaded with clips and even the full version for quite some time. Not sure if they’ve been taken down, but there was a time when it was not hard to find online at all ... that’s probably how many have seen it.

It's not difficult to find. Archive.org has it. I have a digitized copy made from a VHS that is on my Plex server.

 

[Mit88]

WDW - Princess and the Log
Disneyland - Princess and the Smog

 

[Hummingbird]

Imagine having this conversation with a kid. We are changing your ride because it’s racist. The kid pulls up the video of the ride on YouTube and watches it. The kid looks at the parents and says: okay. Now, what exactly was that kid’s take away? This is going to make for awkward conversations since you can’t pop in the DVD and explain it.

I’ve had to have the hard conversations around race with my children. Black people don’t get to gloss it over. We have to go into detail. So imagine having to explain to a 10 year old Black girl why she got uninvited from a sleepover when her white friend’s father found out she was a Black child. Because I had to do that. Being a parent isn’t easy nomatter race, creed, color, or orientation. But you do it, because it makes our children better, more tolerant, and well rounded human beings.

 

[Karin1984]

I do agree that the need to do a good job. If it is a really cheap overlay (I don't think it will be, but if) I can see a lot of people unhappy that it became a "lesser" ride regardless of subject matter.

I think Disney is well aware how popular this ride is and that they have to do a good job with it. Let's give Disney the benefit of the doubt that they can make this work
I think in the coming years Disney will probably try to boost the popularity of the non-caucasian princesses. This is one way.

I can't imagine it's going to be an overlay like with Nightmare before Christmas in the Haunted Mansion in DL. Most likely the track will remain the same. And I think the emotional flow of the ride will remain the same: where there is a happy scene now, there will be a happy scene after the refurb, scary scene = scary scene. They will probably keep the riverboat as that matches PotF.

 

[Hummingbird]

Let’s not hide behind kids when it’s primarily grown adults who are taking issue with the change and saying terrible things.

Kids are capable of understanding and adapting way more than we give them credit for.

I look at my Millennial/ gen z kids all the time and think “The kids are gonna be alright”
They are so much more understanding and open minded and willing to at least hear things out.

 

[Mit88]

Maybe by the time they start construction on this in WDW, Harrison Ford’s Call of the Wild will become a cult classic and they’ll change the theming to portray that film. Maybe they’ll get a better animatronic Buck than the CGI dog they made in the movie

 

[RamblingMad]

Maybe by the time they start construction on this in WDW, Harrison Ford’s Call of the Wild will become a cult classic and they’ll change the theming to portray that film. Maybe they’ll get a better animatronic Buck than the CGI dog they made in the movie

View attachment 504435

Does the dog die in the end?

 

[RamblingMad]

I’ve had to have the hard conversations around race with my children. Black people don’t get to gloss it over. We have to go into detail. So imagine having to explain to a 10 year old Black girl why she got uninvited from a sleepover when her white friend’s father found out she was a Black child. Because I had to do that. Being a parent isn’t easy nomatter race, creed, color, or orientation. But you do it, because it makes our children better, more tolerant, and well rounded human beings.

It’s more about the parents than the kids. My locker partner for all of high school was from India. I brought him home once, and I had an awkward conversation with my parents after he left. It boiled down to me dismissing my parents completely and telling them that he was cool. Of course, now my parents believe nutter conspiracy theories, so they’re pretty hopeless.

 

[Mit88]

Does the dog die in the end?

He goes to the farm upstate. And we see him on the riverboat

 

[RamblingMad]

He goes to the farm upstate. And we see him on the riverboat

I need to read the book.

 

[mousemoose]

No. Disney changes all the time. I've been visiting the parks since 1980. This is certainly not the first time something has changed and certainly not the last. I have fond memories of the things I've enjoyed and look forward to the new things to come. Every time they announce something I love is closing (Maelstrom, Illuminations, Wishes, etc.), I go say goodbye one last time, be grateful for what I experienced and then I let it go. I'm typically very pleasantly surprised and delighted by what comes next.

I've been visiting the parks since 1987. I still am sad that Kitchen Kabaret, Horizons and the original Imagination are gone among others. I can remember riding Splash just after it opened. I had seen one of the Song of the South shorts beforehand and thought it was very enjoyable. Brer Bear quickly became one of my all-time favorite Disney characters. I was thrilled these characters would be in this new ride.

 

[Marthasor]

Imagine having this conversation with a kid. We are changing your ride because it’s racist. The kid pulls up the video of the ride on YouTube and watches it. The kid looks at the parents and says: okay. Now, what exactly was that kid’s take away? This is going to make for awkward conversations since you can’t pop in the DVD and explain it.

Isn't parenting just a series of awkward conversations? I had this conversation with my DS12 yesterday. In the midst of it, he learned a little more about Reconstruction and American history in general.

 

[Eric Smith]

YouTube was loaded with clips and even the full version for quite some time. Not sure if they’ve been taken down, but there was a time when it was not hard to find online at all ... that’s probably how many have seen it.

The clip with the tar baby was still up as of yesterday. Watching that kind of puts all of this in perspective.

 

[Krandor]

Isn't parenting just a series of awkward conversations? I had this conversation with my DS12 yesterday. In the midst of it, he learned a little more about Reconstruction and American history in general.

Which is why what is going on right now isn't whitewashing history to trying to pretend things didn't happen. It is an acknowledgement of what Did happen and a chance to learn more about history.

Until the past few weeks when where were issues with "the eyes of texas are upon you" song and now with zip a dee do dah I was unaware of things like the minstrel shows.

This is an opportunity and chance to learn more history and not to bury it.

 

[The Pho]

YouTube was loaded with clips and even the full version for quite some time. Not sure if they’ve been taken down, but there was a time when it was not hard to find online at all ... that’s probably how many have seen it.

It’s not hard to find at all. Most public domain websites (The Internet Archive being the biggest) hold a copy remastered in HD. Which is generally where most have watched it and where YouTubers source it from.

 

[WorldOfPooh]

Quit beating this dead horse. We are all aware of the origins of these stories and it would have been one thing if the version of them we were presented with were taken directly from the African source, but its not like these stories were frozen in time from the time the Africans who were taken here to be slaves to the time they were compiled and edited by Joel Chandler Harris. These stories were from an oral tradition, and they had centuries to be shaped and informed by their tellers' generations in bondage. For the same reason no one would suggest that spirituals had no subtext about yearning to be "carried home" from the misery of slavery, it's impossible to suggest that over time the meanings and details of the Uncle Remus stories didn't also take on a similar subtext.

Even if you disagree, it's similarly impossible to suggest that Joel Chandler Harris was some neutral transcriber of the Uncle Remus stories. While he seemed relatively genuine in his intent, he was a product of his time that still largely viewed black people as inferior to white people and that shows in the dialect and presentation of the stories, which were not intended to be some sort of compilation of African folktales, but were explicitly designed to be a compilation of African-American folktales told by ex-slaves recently freed from bondage, but still subject to second-class status. If Disney had adapted the ride from sources that had never been pressed into slavery and remained in Africa, the African origins might be relevant, but Disney did not do that (and I think, based on Disney locking down Song of the South indefinitely, they want to get as far away from Br'er Rabbit as they can, regardless if re-adapting and contextualizing them from earlier African sources would be a worthy project). Instead Disney presented the stories largely as is from Harris's retelling/editing and they are simply impossible to extract his influence and the new meanings the stories took on over time through people retelling them while being enslaved.

Furthermore, to the extent that the oral tradition of the Br'er Rabbit dating back to Africa is even acknowledged in the Song of the South, the Uncle Remus character explicitly characterizes these stories as coming from a time when we (meaning his black forebears) were "closer to the animals" and we were happier, as though to suggest that these stories originate from a time when black people were more animalistic and that their unhappiness stems from having moved on from this simplicity (this is all laid out in much greater detail and specificity in the You Must Remember This podcast season about this show by Karina Longworth, who actually rewatched the movie and can cite numerous instances where this implication is clearly made: http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/tag/Song+of+the+South). So even if you excise Uncle Remus from the ride and only focus on Br'er Rabbit, the context in which these stories exist within the movie itself is less than ideal.

Essentially, folklore and other artistic traditions, especially those passed down orally from generation to generation change over time depending on the circumstances of the storyteller (and in this case the biases and perspective of Joel Chandler Harris who compiled and edited them for consumption by white audiences). Context matters, and it's willfully obtuse to pretend that the Uncle Remus version of the Br'er Rabbit stories/Song of the South/Splash Mountain were intended to honor and reference the African tales they derived from. All of them came from the version Harris provided and you can't separate the centuries of baggage that slavery added to them and Harris and his audience's attitudes about the storytellers and the stories themselves when discussing them in the context of Splash Mountain. It's disingenuous to act as though re-theming Splash Mountain will "erase" these African tales when presenting the original African stories was never Disney's intent (or even on Disney's radar) throughout its relationship with Br'er Rabbit.

Uh, nobody is promoting Joel Chandler Harris and Uncle Remus. You are moving the goal posts.

 

[WorldOfPooh]

Splash Mountain was a great ride. Kids only see the cute rabbit and bear nothing more. Why not just take the song out if that the problem, why change the whole ride? Put a Princess and the frog ride closer to New Orlean's Square. Also does nobody see all the voodoo and witch craft in that movie? That's fine for kids.

Exactly, there is no reason to erase Bre'r Rabbit and West African culture and brand that racist.

 

[WorldOfPooh]

It’s good your kid likes that movie. I like the Simpsons, but I still prefer the Back to the Future ride. This redo has to be good.

The Simpsons is considered Racist because of Apu, which is highly offensive to Indian American and Indians.
Would you be okay with erasing the Simpson's TV catalogu.

The Problem With Apu - Official Trailer | truTV