Save Splash Mountain—Why The Laughin’ Place Is Important To Preserve
By Philip Kippel and Zandur
For more than 30 years, Splash Mountain has been an iconic and classic attraction at Disneyland, Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom and Tokyo Disneyland, loved by millions of fans all over the world, many of whom have grown up with it and have many fond memories of riding it, including yours truly. Re-theming such an iconic ride would erode the nostalgia that lives in the Disney theme parks and take away the magic.
Splash Mountain and the movie it is based on, Song of the South, are based on a series of short stories collected by Joel Chandler Harris and Robert Roosevelt (Teddy Roosevelt's Uncle), who spent a lot of time in the slave quarters in the mid-1800s. Harris first heard the stories, along with many others, directly from the tellings of African folklore. Throughout his teen years, Harris worked on a plantation where he befriended slaves and listened to their stories and experiences. As a result, Harris preserved part of their culture and gave a voice to a race of people that did not have a voice back then. Harris, whose original stories are all set after the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery, was a reconciliation activist writer and journalist of the Reconstruction Era, when he would go on to write for the Atlanta, Georgia newspaper where he created the characters of Uncle Remus (who was based on a real person), Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, Br'er Bear, etc. to talk about racial issues of the time. Thus the Uncle Remus stories were literally written to inform people about racial issues in the 1800s!
Like the movie, Splash Mountain does not include depictions of slaves and is based on historical African folklore that families of all racial and ethnic groups have been enjoying for years and have passed down from generation to generation. The attraction and the movie are not racist, offensive or discriminating in any way, as I have seen many smiling and happy guests after they take the final plunge down Chick-A-Pin Hill. It never gets old and nobody wants to see The Laughin' Place get replaced. Angry or offended faces are VERY few and far between. The stories and folklore surrounding this wonderful attraction are from actual African folklore! The idea of erasing or burying the stories told by African Americans is really awful, as it represents a part of American history and it's best that they not become forgotten. If they do become forgotten, history will be doomed to repeat itself once again!
Ever since the announcement of Splash Mountain being re-themed to The Princess and the Frog on June 25th, 2020, it has divided many Disney fans, employees and cast members alike, creating nothing but hatred and ignorance with fans attacking each other and defending vitriolic behavior nonstop and anyone posting comments on social media sites defending Splash Mountain and Song of the South getting met with personal attacks, people getting falsely accused of being “racist,” people getting laughed at and people unfriending and blocking each other on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media sites over such nonsense and misunderstandings! Not only has the announcement destroyed countless personal and professional friendships and relationships and made many individuals even less sensible, but I have even seen many cast members become woke, overly-negative and attack other cast members and guests just because they want to defend Splash Mountain and keep it as it is--such unprofessional behavior clearly goes against the Disney way! Basically, the people that are attacking those who are against the re-theme are pretty much trying to lynch mob anyone who disagrees with them! Never before has the Disney fan community been so divided and it is just as upsetting that the CEOs, executives, managers and higher-ups do not seem to care or get it. And they announced it right at the height of a worldwide pandemic, low funding, lack of attendance at the parks and some of the biggest political turmoil that will probably ever occur during our lifetimes. All incredibly fishy and tasteless. The re-theme is not honest—it's nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction (especially to the murder of George Floyd) and a bad decision by Disney. The politically-correct people who have defended the re-theme are also not honest, their weapons of choice being insults and labeling.. This conquest must be stopped as it's all completely based upon a false narrative! The people who want this change are just selfish and only care about outside appearances and checking boxes! Decisions like this are beyond terrible! Most people aren't even bothered by this ride's theme and love it just the way it is. It is mind-blowing how people can take such an innocent, family-friendly theme park ride and corrupt it with politics and cancel culture. Outside word occurrences (such as the murder of George Floyd) should have nothing to do with what are supposed to be The Happiest Places on Earth! Such people seriously need to get a life and find more important things to worry about!
Even if there was no pandemic, re-theming such a colossal attraction that takes up such a ginormous footprint in each of the 3 Disney parks it’s located in would still be way too time-consuming and cost-prohibitive, creating an even greater potential for the company to lose even more money and guests/customers/fans. Splash Mountain is too loved, too expensive and too massive for them to even do anything with it. They have also LITERALLY done several massive refurbishments to it, so why would they consider even re-theming it? It means too much to everyone. The thing makes a ton of money every single year! 9 out of 10 guests go to the Disney parks strictly for Splash Mountain and it’s at the top of EVERY Top 10 List of MUST DO RIDES BEFORE YOU DIE and got ranked #2 IN THE WORLD for best non-roller coaster themed ride last year. So why would they screw something like that up?!
The vast majority of audiences want Splash Mountain to remain as it is and also for Song of the South to be officially released on DVD and streaming in the United States, including a large majority of African Americans such as Disney Legend Whoopi Goldberg, the family of Br'er Bear voice actor Nick Stewart (such as his daughter Valarie) and Miss Georgia Smith of the Uncle Remus Museum in Eatonton, Georgia. In addition, many Disney old-timers who worked for the company when Walt was still alive think the re-theme is a bad idea and the studio's turning on the film is a disgrace.
Another thing adding to all the hypocrisy in refusing to release the film is the fact that the popular song "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" (which has become a Walt Disney Company anthem alongside "When You Wish Upon a Star") is still being heavily featured in official Disney media. "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" also won an Oscar for Best Song and is #47 in the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Songs in Movie History. Not a single song in The Princess and the Frog won an Oscar! And trying to erase or remove "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" from area music loops, merchandise and other sources and media is not "relevant" or "inclusive" in any way--it's hypocritical!
A Princess and the Frog ride would not fit into any of Splash Mountain's incarnations thematically for many reasons, as they were all painstakingly designed to fit into the locations that they are in:
—The Disneyland version of Splash Mountain is the face of Critter Country and if that version gets re-themed to Princess and the Frog, it will not only ruin Critter Country and its thematic cohesion, but it would also mess with the Haunted Mansion's theme right next door. And including human characters in a Critter Country attraction would be out of place, since it is designed to be a land inhabited entirely by woodland animals only with human beings nowhere to be seen. And they cannot simply just expand New Orleans Square like that!
—The Walt Disney World version of Splash Mountain is designed to fit into Frontierland, therefore having a Louisiana-themed attraction in the middle of the wild west next to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad or in Frontierland in general would stick out like a sore thumb and create another thematic mess.
Plus Frontierland, Critter Country and even New Orleans Square all take place in the 1800s, which is also when Song of the South takes place, while The Princess and the Frog takes place in the 1920s, making it even more of a terrible fit for those areas!
It would also be way too expensive and time-consuming to re-theme such a large attraction! Plus merchandise featuring the Brer characters and the ride as it is remain extremely popular and profitable anyway.
And Walt Disney Imagineering usually steers clear of creating attractions with height requirements based on any of their "Princess" movies and actually has a policy of not creating thrill rides starring any of the official Disney Princesses (Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Wandering Oaken’s Sliding Sleds do not count as “Princess-themed attractions"), so a Princess-themed ride with height requirements and soaking wet drops is a terrible idea--many families and parents will complain to City Hall if their little girls or boys cannot ride if the re-theme ever happened. And the little girls' princess costumes can get damaged from the water and lose most of their glitter. Why would they change clothes in order to ride a princess-themed ride?
The Princess and the Frog, despite having a cult following of its own, was not a success at the box office; it grossed less than a computer-animated Alvin and the Chipmunks movie the same year! In another example of blatant hypocrisy, even Disney brushed off The Princess and the Frog as a flop for years and now they're suddenly wanting to devote a ride to it?! By way of contrast, Song of the South was successful at the box office, both during its original 1946 theatrical release and during its four subsequent theatrical reissues in 1956, 1972, 1980 and 1986.
In particular, the success of the 1986 reissue, celebrated in the now-integrated city of Atlanta with Citizen Kane and All My Children co-star Ruth Warrick, who played Miss Sally in the movie, in attendance, is one of the factors that lead to the Splash Mountain project getting the green light from Michael Eisner! However, Song of the South had become such a hot potato by the mid-1980s that the Imagineers felt the need to divorce the ride from the film, having it only feature the "not-so-controversial" aspects of the film such as the animated characters and the songs, eradicating Uncle Remus and the other live-action characters, therefore side-stepping the legacy of James Baskett, the first Black man to win an Oscar, in the process.
Walt Disney insisted on adding new attractions and improving the older ones by adding things not replacing or re-theming such iconic legendary attractions! Walt did not like repeating himself with creative works; he always created new films and experiences--it's the reason why he never made sequels to any of his full-length animated features and why he would never re-theme an attraction, because he would've ended up repeating himself. Therefore, re-theming an existing attraction would be a step backwards and not be progress in the slightest possible manner. Walt Disney loved nostalgia--it is the reason why Walt loved steam-powered trains and created Main Street USA. As he once said, “I love the nostalgic myself. I hope we never lose some of the things of the past.” Plus the nostalgia factor is another key component of the Disney theme parks that has helped make them stand out from the crowd and be seen as better than most other theme parks.
If they make the mistake of going through with the re-theme, check back in 10 years when the revision to the ride also starts being seen as racist too, due to The Princess and the Frog becoming "insensitive for modern times". The stereotypes (created by white people, no less) in The Princess and the Frog are MUCH worse than anything in Song of the South. If anything, The Princess and the Frog is actually a racist movie deep down, whereas Song of the South is actually a true inclusive movie that takes a stand against racism! Disney executives, employees and cast members need to wake up and realize that there are way more people that want to keep Splash Mountain as it is rather than destroy it!!
Disney's Animal Kingdom, Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge and Epcot's African Outpost also serve as homages and tributes to African heritage and African American culture, from artifacts to architecture to symbols and so much more. This is a celebration, and Splash Mountain deserves to be treated the same way because they're all related.
Whenever Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear come out for meet-and-greets in the Disney theme parks and resorts, guests are always happy to see them. Not once do things like racism pop into the guests' heads when meeting those wonderful characters! The Br'ers are just as popular, timeless, iconic, beloved and important to Disney's history, legacy and lore as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Winnie the Pooh, Tinker Bell, the Princesses and all the other characters. The Br'ers have been mainstays at the Disney parks since at least the late 1960s and guests have enjoyed meeting them and seeing them ever since. Another reason why Splash Mountain was greenlit is because the Br'er characters have always been so popular in the parks and if the Br'ers were to stop making appearances, everybody will be VERY unhappy and the parks would never be the same without them!
If Splash Mountain gets ruined, other classic Disney theme park attractions and elements like Country Bear Jamboree, Carousel of Progress, Enchanted Tiki Room, Peter Pan's Flight, It's a Small World, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, The Hall of Presidents, The American Adventure, etc. could end up suffering, getting removed or becoming sanitized as well due to caving in to small minorities that have nothing better to do than pick apart every single little thing! It is time for a revolution to make sure that the company's history gets preserved, all politically-motivated changes get reversed and political correctness/cancel culture/censorship stay far, far away from Disney, its parks and its works. Continuing such acts of desecration and pandering to the woke mob will not only continue to push away the majority of audiences and guests, but it will also continue to cause the company to lose money as well due to their attempts at forcing diversity and empowerment down our throats!
It is absurd to pander to small groups and re-theme nostalgic attractions like Splash Mountain. The characters in Splash Mountain do not specifically generalize any race or group of people--they are nothing more than caricatures based on old Americana. Re-theming Splash Mountain will not change history or make any positive difference in the world outside the realm of Disney, and it will only encourage the "easily offended" to continue making desperate attempts at finding offense in additional attractions and everything else. To change them would be to remove a bit of our art history from the world and to be ashamed of it.
The smarter choice is to just keep the wonderful African American folktales in the Disney parks. They are literally as African American as it gets. Neither Joel Chandler Harris nor Walt Disney attempted to whitewash them. The stories and the dialect in them are wonderfully intact, with the characters speaking in what is supposed to be authentic lost dialects of the American south--it is also intended to reflect just one of the 1,001 different funny ways that people in the United States of America like to talk, with absolutely no mockery intended whatsoever. Disney added some fantastic music of course, but that's it. Tearing down the Br'er Rabbit tales for what amounts to an Americanization of a European fairy tale is horribly misguided. That's not being an ally, that's being uneducated!
The people upset about the announcement to re-theme Splash Mountain and these other things are not racist, selfish or overly-nostalgic! They want to save them because they are NOT racist and want it all to be preserved for future generations! Retheming Splash Mountain would actually erase the voices of African Americans and slaves—it’s their stories and they deserve equal display alongside the likes of Cinderella.
Additionally, just re-theming an existing attraction like Splash Mountain to The Princess and the Frog instead of building a completely new attraction based on that film from scratch would further cheapen and insult the Black community. A MUCH better compromise would indeed be to keep Splash Mountain as it is with its Song of the South theme and build a new separate high-tech dark ride attraction themed to The Princess and the Frog from scratch on some currently-empty land or underutilized backstage space in the parks. That way, the parks would have not one but TWO major attractions honoring African Americans and everybody wins--true empowerment with no agendas, no erasing history and no forced diversity.
A lot of people now hate The Princess and the Frog because of all this nonsense! And people can tell that a Disney idea is that bad if people start hating the film/property that it's exploiting.
It also speaks volumes that Disney started ignoring Nick Stewart and his family after Splash Mountain opened! When Nick’s theater, the Ebony Showcase Theater, lost its funding and got torn down, Disney ignored it! When Nick died in 2000, The Walt Disney Company barely acknowledged it! Disney could’ve partnered with the Stewart family, but chose not to, which is TRUE racism and makes modern Disney executives like Michael Eisner, Bob Iger, Bob Chapek, Bob Weis, Charita Carter, Carmen Smith, Josh D’Amaro, etc. look even more like racists, phonies and two-faced! If they really cared about black lives and black voices, they would’ve reached out to the Stewarts years ago! Even so, not one of the company's executives from the board of directors to middle management have ever cared to explain why Disney’s first black princess is only worthy of a second-hand/hand-me-down ride, especially when The Princess and the Frog did not succeed in its goal to bring traditional animation back to Walt Disney Animation Studios.
All 3 incarnations of Splash Mountain in California, Florida and Japan are all best left alone and unchanged, but they can be enhanced in ways like adding new effects, upgrading the sound systems and audio-animatronic figures, seasonal overlays, etc.! A timeless, joyful and feel-good ride like Splash Mountain has created so many happy memories for guests from all over the world and for people of all races and colors. The attraction is already inclusive and diverse with its cast of animals, as they sing happy songs and live together in harmony.
Re-theming Splash Mountain to The Princess and the Frog would make it exclusive, not inclusive. It would also make it racist and sexist due to its source material having been written by the German anti-Semitic Grimm Brothers and continuing to insist that “women belong in the kitchen”, among other unfortunate implications. Splash Mountain represents the only authentically-Black stories in Disneyland, Magic Kingdom and Tokyo Disneyland. The Uncle Remus stories are not just Black stories--they are American stories. You cannot separate Black culture from American culture. Uncle Remus is part of that heritage. If Splash Mountain is lost, the Disney castle parks will end up losing the only authentically-Black stories to ever be represented in them. Most of the people wanting to destroy Splash Mountain are uneducated individuals who have never seen Song of the South, do not understand the history of the Uncle Remus stories and fail to realize that they’re trying to replace and erase part of African American history with a European story. Disney must stop kneeling to uneducated and single-minded mobs that probably don't even visit the parks! You do not preserve parts of history by trying to silence or erase them. How can we move forward as a country if we keep erasing our past?! How are future generations going to learn our history if everything keeps getting erased by angry and truly-racist individuals who love getting offended on behalf of others?!
Splash Mountain, along with Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, It's a Small World, Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Matterhorn Bobsleds, Enchanted Tiki Room, Country Bear Jamboree, Carousel of Progress, Jungle Cruise and the Fantasyland Dark Rides are the magnum opus amid quintessential Disney theme park experiences. All those attractions are not only already timeless, nostalgic, magical, unforgettable, authentically-Disney and have aged well like fine wine--they are also must-dos whenever anyone visits any of the Disney parks and they still enjoy them to this day without question. Without Splash Mountain, one of the iconic Disney mountains at the parks, the parks won't be the same anymore and all those nostalgic memories made from many happy kids and adults alike will be forgotten. It's best to keep the memories flowing. These attractions deserve to be declared as historic landmarks. Splash Mountain shall remain open forever!
The Disney parks have already been inclusive since the opening of Disneyland in 1955! Walt Disney wanted Disneyland and the other parks to be happy and magical places where guests from all backgrounds, races and walks of life can have a good time, create magical memories that will be cherished forever, travel to whole new worlds and forget about the problems in the real world for a while! He did not want political statements or political upbringings in his beloved parks! Disneyland, Walt Disney World and the rest are supposed to be free from politics!
Changing Splash Mountain's theme is not going to make the parks or anything else better! Doing it will destroy many happy memories made there by guests who rode the popular iconic classic attraction! Retheming Splash Mountain will not erase the world's problems, as it is a sacred attraction to most guests from around the world and re-theming it will only make things even worse!
Many fans from all over the world and online are sharing and voicing that Splash Mountain must be kept as it is. It is one of Disney's crown jewels and a legendary and well-done attraction. Fans share their passion for the attraction as I am and they've shared their Splash Mountain merchandise collections, fan arts, letters, emails and T-shirts to show them that they're true fans! The Splash Mountain fan testimonials and opinions show that Splash Mountain is here to stay!
Despite what some folks like former Disney CEO Bob Iger have said, "Song of the South" IS appropriate for today's world and it is time for folks like Iger to grow a spine and release the film anyway, as we will not leave them alone until they cave in, stop bowing down to fanatical minority groups that will never be satisfied and do it! If films like Gone with the Wind, The Birth of a Nation, The Color Purple, Blazing Saddles, etc. can still be made available to watch by the general public, it is time for Song of the South to finally follow suit and be released from the Disney Vault, as continuing to hold the film hostage continues to do a great disservice to both Walt Disney's legacy and the Black community as a whole! After all, as Uncle Remus taught Johnny, "You can't run away from trouble. There ain't no place that far.”
And when that inevitable day comes that Disney makes it known that they will finally be releasing Song of the South on DVD, Blu-ray, 4k UHD and Disney+, keeping Splash Mountain as it is with that film's theming intact and building a new separate Princess and the Frog attraction from scratch somewhere else instead of replacing or re-theming Splash Mountain or any other existing attractions, it will be a Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Day for sure!
