Spreading the Magic...without the Mouse's Blessing

It is no secret that the opening of Disneyland in July 1955 had unleashed the tourism craze that lasted well into the early 1970's. It's not only evident with establishing backwater towns, such as Anaheim, Calif. and Orlando, Fla. as major tourist hubs and even cultural epicenters. Granted, Orlando was relatively known for being one of the largest cities in Central Florida before Walt Disney announced his intentions to build a futuristic city and theme park resort, whereas Anaheim was just another town in the groves of Orange County when Disney selected the site for his massive playground, but the Mouse's occupancy is a certain route to rapid expansion. After Disneyland opened, Walt was disturbed by the magical effect his park had on the surrounding area where miles and miles of nightclubs, motels, bars, restaurants, and suburbs quickly popped up, which led him to factor in the purchase of land adjacent to any future development.


There were many factors that contributed to the rapid growth of Orange County in the 1950's, Disneyland being a major one, but also the network of highways driven by a growing consumer culture and the newfound freedom ignited by the automobile which offered families a standard of life that had not been accessible to most Americans in the past. In 1956 and 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower, who was impressed with the efficiency of the Autobahn system in Germany during WWII, wanted something similar for the United States, which culminated in the Interstate Highway Act.


With the instantaneous success of Disneyland, it was apparent that the formula could be applied to other parts of the country and even internationally. While Walt and Disney management were getting constant offers to build a second Disneyland, a falling out between the construction manager, C.V. Wood, and Disney had resulted in Wood's termination from the company.


Wood established Marco Engineering and tried to replicate the Disneyland formula on three occasions. The first attempt was a Colorado theme park called Magic Mountain (yes, there was a Magic Mountain outside of California), where guests were treated to various experiences similar to the park in Anaheim. For example, guests were ushered through an old town square and railroad depot before choosing to visit the fairy-tale section, the Old West frontier town, or the world of tomorrow. Sounds familiar?


After it opened in the late 1950's, it was losing money and it shut down in 1960. However, this didn't deter Wood from looking east to New England for his next attempt.


In 1959, Pleasure Island debuted in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and it was marketed as the "Disneyland of the Northeast". Even though it was operated on a seasonal basis to account for the harsh New England winters, it was reportedly one of the most expensive investments in a tourist attraction in the state.


Pleasure Island closed after the 1969 season and the remains of the attraction would be left behind, only to be either stolen and even destroyed by vandals or fall into a state of extreme disrepair.


Meanwhile, Wood thought New York City would be a wonderful location for a Disneyland-style theme park. After all, New York had/has Coney Island, which is the antithesis of Disneyland, and it needed a Disneyland of sorts. Focusing in on periods of American history with attention to geographical nuances was the basis for Freedomland USA. In 1960, Freedomland opened and was featured on the Ed Sullivan Show as the "Disneyland of the East Coast". It was popular and beloved by many, including people in my family, but it was unfortunately another one of Wood's failed attempts to replicate the Disney magic. However, this is not the last I'll be writing about C.V. Wood, mark my words.


As early as 1959, Disney knew Florida was a great place to expand his empire, so he appealed to local businesses, including the Recreation Corporation of America.

Disney undoubtedly inspired Pirate World, a piracy-themed theme park in Dania (just north of Miami), Florida. Pirate World opened in April 1967, just four-and-a-half years before Walt Disney World, and was themed to seven eras of piracy.

Now, we've heard the story about the Pirates of the Caribbean being snubbed from the guest list of WDW's Opening Day attractions due to the redundancy of theming anything related to piracy in a state where piracy is no different than cowboys out here in the Southwest, but imagine that a company that built small-scale theme parks would be consulting the face of theme park success. To me, that's humorous.

Though, Walt understandably didn't like the cost of dealing with the Recreation Corporation of America and he chose to continue with the Florida Project with WED. At any rate, Walt Disney World jeopardized Pirate World in 1971 and Pirate World closed down in 1975.


Speaking of localized theme parks, I live in the Southwestern United States where the majority of our history is based on the rugged, frontier spirit of the Old West. Places like Phoenix, Tucson, Tombstone, Bisbee, Jerome, Prescott, Calico, Golden, El Paso, Santa Fe, Silverton, and Denver are familiar and part of our vernacular.

Here in Arizona, we had a Disneyland-style theme park on the border between Phoenix and Tempe. Named Legend City, this attraction was inspired by Disneyland and had included an 1890's Main Street, a Mexican Village, an Indian Village, and a Boom Town as well as a Modern Section (basically a Tomorrowland) and a kiddie park (basically a copy of Fantasyland). It was designed by a Mesa entrepreneur who went to Arizona State University (like yours truly) and one of the designers also reportedly did some work with the Disney Company.

Entertaining guests, hometown favorites Wallace and Ladmo were weekend staples and on occasion, their own television show would be broadcast from the park. My grandparents went there and my parents went there. I've been to the site of the former park, but since Legend City operated from 1963 until 1983, I wasn't able to visit the park. In fact, my father's family went there on one of the last days it operated because of my Grandma's job.


The point is that Disneyland's success fueled the growth of the tourism industry and had inspired several theme parks, most of which are instantly recognized. In 1955, Angus Wynne took a trip to Disneyland and after being impressed, he imported the idea of a clean, ordered, themed attraction back to his native Texas where he began working on what became Six Flags Over Texas. Six Flags opened as a tribute to Texan history in August 1961, but it spawned a chain of theme parks across the United States and abroad.

The major difference was the pricing model. Instead of purchasing ticket books with coupons for the rides, the pricing model was to charge general admission, which included all attractions. In fact, the Magic Mountain theme park in California opened in 1971 with that payment system (Six Flags would acquire Magic Mountain in 1979).

An Oklahoma man who went to Disneyland in 1955 had the same idea as Wynne and bought a series of buildings left over from Oklahoma State's Bicentennial in 1958 to create a western theme park called Frontier City.

Meanwhile, an Orange County roadside attraction called Knott's Berry Farm was already known for their chicken dinners, pies, and an authentic recreation of an Old West ghost town that entertained hungry patrons by the time Disneyland opened. Walter Knott had a friendly relationship with Walt Disney as they were pretty much neighbors.

Walter added a narrow-gauge railroad circling the property and Walt took a trip to see the train himself. In 1968, Walter fenced off the park and started charging admission, thus becoming a bona fide theme park in the process.

Following the model set up by Disney, Universal Studios in Hollywood became a theme park the same year Sea World opened in San Diego (1964).

Speaking of Southern Californian tourism, CBS set up a nautical theme park in Santa Monica on a pier to rival Disneyland. Upon opening in 1958, it was an immediate success, but unfortunately problems plagued the park through the 1960's and it shut down permanently in late 1967.

As per the similarities between the POP and Disneyland, they both had dark rides, kiddie rides, a house of the future, a sky ride, a train, walk-thrus, a trip to Mars, and a car ride on a highway-like track.


Nara Dreamland was the name of a Japanese theme park that operated for around forty-five years. Designed similarly to Walt Disney's original Magic Kingdom with various lands gathered around a town square, Nara Dreamland had a strange history. So the story goes that a Japanese businessman had traveled to the United States in the late-1950's and after seeing now successful the then-recently opened Disneyland, he contacted Walt with the intent of bringing the Disney theme park brand overseas. Construction was underway and it looked like Japan was going to receive its own Disneyland...until the businessman had a disagreement over the licensing fees with Disney and Disney dropped out of the project. Meanwhile, the park was nearing completion and the decision was made to open it as Nara Dreamland in 1961.

Since it opened in 1961, Nara Dreamland had resembled the Disneyland of yesteryear. Like the original, they had a Matterhorn-style bobsled roller coaster, an inviting castle conjured up from Bavarian fairy tales, a boat ride through exotic jungles, a town square, a sky ride, and a unique take on Frontierland called Ancestor Land. Of course, they added rides over time, but it wasn't enough when in 1983, Disney opened their own Japanese theme park in Chiba (just east of Tokyo). Ironically, this signaled the end of Nara Dreamland and after years of rising operating costs and little growth in attendance, they shut down the park in 2006. In the years since it closed, it became one of the most popular abandoned places in Japan for urban explorers.


Pixieland was an Oregon kiddie park that opened in 1969 and operated for four seasons before closing in 1973. This was based on Disneyland's Fantasyland section and was done on a tighter budget.

King's Island had the honor of being conceptualized by the pencil of Bruce Bushman, who worked on Disneyland's design from 1953 until he quit in 1956. The International Street area is based exactly on Main Street USA and its planned International Street expansion in the mid-1950's.

Disney advisers reportedly consulted on the early concepts for an Iowa theme park called Adventureland that opened in 1974. In fact, many of the attractions are based on Disneyland rides, such as the Haunted Mansion, the Pirates of the Caribbean, the Autopia, the Jungle Cruise, and even Space Mountain as well as similarly themed areas, such as an alpine-Bavarian village, a New Orleans-themed area, a Wild West ghost town, and an 1890's Midwestern town square.

Europa Park, which is one of the only major European theme parks to be influenced by Disneyland (not counting Disneyland Paris, obviously), opened in 1975. Unfortunately, a fire in May 2018 had devastated their copycat Pirates ride, known as the Pirates in Bavatia, as well as the Scandinavian and Dutch sections of the park. European fairy-tales and folklore are a major part of the park.


What happened to this craze?

In October 1973, there was a massive oil embargo that lasted through the spring of 1974 and this caused a decline in tourism that had ended the 18 years of a travel boom. However, two years prior had seen the opening of Walt Disney World, which spurred Central Florida to become of the major tourism hubs in the United States. Sea World opened their Orlando theme park in December 1973, on the same exact day that the Pirates ride opened at the nearby Magic Kingdom. Disney World made Central Florida grow and parks, such as Circus World, Wet n' Wild, and later Universal, came to the swamps of Florida.

2018 Reflection

Since we are wrapping up this year, I am looking forward to 2019. Like the Imagineers, I am always looking for ways to improve my product without spending a fortune, so I concocted a schedule of things I want to write about and the expected release dates.

As I have stated in the past, this is not exclusively a history blog dedicated to the Disney theme parks or the contextual social history behind the design of the parks, but it's my history blog. That means I reserve the right to write about anything that fascinates me. Of course, this is not a refusal to do anything Disney related, but it's rather my stated goal to write about things that involve history, sociology, art, philosophy, and other disciplines.

I hope to focus on oddball events, obscure facts, and the psychology behind tragedies. I take no joy in suffering, but 2019 will be a hallmark anniversary for a number of said tragedies, including Isla Vista (5), Columbine (20), Montreal (30), San Ysidro (35), and the Manson Family (50).

On a brighter note, I will be writing about video games, a fixture of my life since I was really little, as well as personal entries.

I hope you join me in the upcoming year and be sure to comment about what you would like me to address.

45 Years of Sailing with the Tide at Walt Disney World

I must apologize for my failure to complete my projected magnum opus on the forty-fifth anniversary of the Pirates of the Caribbean at Walt Disney World. I was just swimming in a pool of laziness and I put it on hold for the midway point between the 15th and the 25th. I figured that it would be a great Christmas gift for everyone involved.

Let's talk about the date. It's "known" by everyone in the Disney-sphere that the Pirates ride at Disney World opened its wooden doors to the public on 15 December 1973.

According to the Eyes & Ears newsletter of 1 December 1973, the opening was set for 15 December 1973, which usually refers to a cast member preview or even a soft opening in the context of when a ride is debuted.



Since the attraction apparently had its grand opening on the 16th according to local Orlando newspapers (which was likely a press opening), it's been suggested that actor Rock Hudson, who was in town for the narration of the Candlelight Processional, did two ceremonies, but the current evidence regarding the opening date points to the ceremonies taking place on 15 December 1973. The 17th of December 1973 was also suggested as an opening date for guests, according to the Walt Disney World News magazine issued for December 1973.

So it's declared, until there is certain evidence to the contrary, the opening date of the Pirates was 15 December 1973.

Okay, let's move on with the plans to celebrate the 45th. I suggested the formation of the Caribbean Plaza Historical Society, which is dedicated to the design and history behind one of Disney World's famous evocative lands.

I also worked on a possible tee-shirt design and I posted about the history of the ride.

Let's take a trip back in time to 1967 when the Pirates had debuted and the Florida Project was underway. So the Pirates were omitted from the serious considerations of WED for the park in Florida. There were several reasons for the omission: it would cost too much, it did not fit into the landscape of the park as it seemed redundant (Florida is too close to the Caribbean), pirates were part of Florida lore (fake pirates in a state where real pirates were more interesting), and Florida was too close to New Orleans for a "Square" land.

The Pirates were replaced with the cowboys of the Western River Expedition and October 1971 loomed closer and closer.

Immediately after the October 1971 opening of the Magic Kingdom, guests who were expecting the same experiences as guests in California were very, very disappointed that the Pirates weren't there. So in December 1971, the Pirates ride was approved for construction and decisions were made to include the ride. April 1972 had the site selected for the Pirates and a May 1972 Ears and Eyes announcement on the arrival of the Pirates (set for summer 1973) with most elements identical to the one in California. The writer of the announcement even included that it was start out in the Louisiana bayou, which either suggests that WED had planned some sort of New Orleans Square atmosphere to that corner of the park or that the writer knew the ride in California and assumed it would be a copy of the original.

Either way, Disney management held a press conference of sorts on 21 October 1972 about upcoming projects for Walt Disney World at the Contemporary Resort. One of the projects was, of course, the being-designed Pirates of the Caribbean and the new version was given a new sub-land called Caribbean Plaza, instead of New Orleans Square, and it was slated to debut during the 1973 Christmas season.

Since construction on the attraction began in September 1972 after the Railroad was realigned for the addition of the show building, it was only a matter of months before construction began on Caribbean Plaza proper.


Torre del Cielo, which is the clock-tower rising above Caribbean Plaza, was finished during the Spring of 1973.

Construction resumed through 1973 and wrapped up sometime around Thanksgiving 1973. A hectic 15 months had culminated in one of the most eventful openings at Walt Disney World. Rock Hudson helped unveil the ride to the world and despite problems plaguing the ride system, which merits its own post, the Pirates were an instant success like their California counterparts almost seven years before.


After we established that the Pirates opened to the public in December 1973 at the beginning of the busy holiday season, it should be noted that Caribbean Plaza was not yet completed for the opening.

According to a cast member who worked the opening for Pirates, the House of Treasure gift shop opened along with the ride and the area immediately following the ride's exit was an extension of that gift shop with sombreros, flowers, and a candy cart. This area became its own gift shop in 1975 under the name of Pirate's Bazaar until it was finally renamed to Plaza del Sol Caribe in 1980. The merchandise in this area had to be secured inside the House of Treasure at night before Disney installed these iron gates.

In mid-March 1974, the northern half of Caribbean Plaza was still under construction and had signs declaring the opening of the shops and refreshment stand as Spring 1974. Between March and May, Caribbean Plaza became explorable to WDW guests and the arrival of the Caribbean Arcade (similar to the Pirate's Arcade in New Orleans Square at Disneyland) in late 1974 completed the Plaza.

In late 1975, the Peg-Leg Parrot WED had designed for the exit ramp in the unloading area was moved to the front of the queue as a Barker Bird, who would remain in that position until March 2006. Over the course of the next two decades, few things would change in Caribbean Plaza.

1992 saw the end of the Princes del Cristal shop and the nearby Golden Galleon when El Pirata y El Perico needed more dining space.

Meanwhile, the preceding autumn (Fall 1991) had the loading area redesigned from holding two operating load flumes into having one operable loading flume. The reasoning was due to the high cost of maintenance and the risk of having a guest losing a finger with the ride system. Understand that a ride system designed and built in the 1970's was designed without the fear of litigious retribution due to guest negligence or misbehavior. In fact, the use of gates to hold guests on the loading dock was not even seen as an absolute safety necessity when the original Pirates opened in 1967. 

The date of the PC refurb for the Pirates is not verified. Some say the removal of most of the Chase sequence was done in 1994 during a refurb, but others report the refurb as occurring over the last month of 1996 and the first month of 1997. However, the 1997 PC refurb in California had noted that Florida's version was not due for a change in the scene itself. In fact, sometime between 1997 and 2006 saw its replacement.

After tourism dropped in late 2001 due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, El Pirata y El Perico only operated seasonally and the House of Treasure was closed down before it was converted into the Pirates' League salon in 2009. The Pirate and the Parrot was renamed in 2011 to the Tortuga Tavern, playing into the popularity of the film franchise.

One of the most notable changes to the Pirates and Caribbean Plaza took place in the first half of 2006. After the swashbuckling success of the Pirates of the Caribbean film, plans to tie-in the characters of the film with an already popular attraction were drafted for Florida and California (and the other parks). On 1 March 2006, the Pirates of the Caribbean closed down for the refurb and then it briefly opened for a few weeks in April before being reopened on 7 July 2006. The refurb saw the Florida show resemble the one in California and yet it balanced this with the addition of Jack Sparrow.

Over the next decade, the Pirates would be altered with each refurb.

In 2012, the Pirates of the Caribbean was given another refurbishment and the casualty was the thematic structure/duality of the queue. There were and still are two distinct queues, but the refurbishment saw the addition of a merger point for both queues as part of the Fastpass Plus program. You see that the queue for the WDW's Pirates was designed and planned out in 1972 before it was installed and completed in 1973 and while key elements of the Florida show were drowned out by the Disneyland-centric Imagineering team in 2006, the queue lines remained separate and the architectural layouts (blueprints) dating back to November 1972 reflected the "duality" of the queue lines where the left side was the "Soldier" side and the right side was the "Pirate" side. With a merger point in the queue that required the elimination of the ship-building dry dock scenery, which established the load area as a secret port "outside" of El Castillo, the narrative of the queue has been drastically altered from what was intended in 1972 and 1973. Another aspect of the queue that was ruined, I mean altered, was the rerouting of the right line ("Pirate" side). Part of the original design was the use of slopes and ramps to immerse guests in the queue. So beyond the turnstiles, the queue was once a single hall that split in a courtyard (the room with all the cannons and barrels) with the left side continuing on and the right side taking a sharp turn and sloping down towards a mounted cannon. This line would be elevated once again to create the illusion of a deep, subterranean dungeon before descending upon the loading area. The entry point for the line was reconstructed at the very front of the turnstile area and the subtleties of the queue were lost in translation. Meanwhile, this was the same queue that would accommodate most guests in theory and some suggest its redesign was the result of ADA laws and wheelchair accessibility, which fascinates me, a disabled Disney nerd.

The Pirates continued to be changed with a major refurb in 2015 and a quick Summer 2017 show enhancement that I saw on its first day (the Skull camera before the drop).

Last year (2017) saw the replacement of the "politically incorrect" Auctioneer scene with something less than spectacular. Without going into a raving rant about why I don't like the scene or the decision to change a scene that has both a sense of humor and yet an educational aspect (pirates weren't exactly moral people), I will say that the redesign of the scene doesn't exactly fit the narrative of the attraction well, but it does allude to a somewhat accurate part of pirate history---female piracy. Yes, there were lady pirates who were as successful and as brutal as their male counterparts.

Hopefully, the Caribbean Plaza Historical Society will be successful and even influential in future decisions regarding the attraction.

Attraction/Park Profile

Hello, this is John and I am a Disney historian, so I hope to impart some knowledge upon my readers, or maybe just evidence that I am autistic by explaining in-depth my obsession with Disney attractions and their history.

In fact, I am a history major.

Today, I am launching a series of profiles on various Disney attractions.

I plan to write profiles on the Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, It's a Small World, Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, the Country Bear Jamboree, Peter Pan's Flight, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Space Mountain, the Hall of Presidents, the Jungle Cruise, the Carousel of Progress, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the Matterhorn Bobsleds, Snow White's Adventures, and several other classic attractions.

The Wildest Attraction in the Wilderness

"This here is the wildest ride in the wilderness," a loud miner proclaims this every time a train on the Big Thunder Railroad embarks on another routine trip through the mines of Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland and other Disney parks, but that sentence alone has a history so wild that it puts Mr. Toad's car ride through the shires of England and Old London to shame.

It's a history that begins with Disney's Riverfront Square concept in the early 1960's and how the idea of a western boat ride would seep into the design of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in the 1960's.

As I have covered previously, the Pirates of the Caribbean, which was a massive success at Disneyland when the Walt Disney World was being planned, was not planned for the Magic Kingdom in Florida. The Western boat ride was the answer to the need for an E-Ticket attraction namely a musical revue of cowboys, banditos, can-can girls, prairie animals, cacti, and an owl designed on the scale of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

The attraction was to be housed within a Southwestern mesa, similar to the ones in Monument Valley (in both Arizona and Utah), called Thunder Mesa. Along with the Western River Expedition, Thunder Mesa would house a number of attractions, including a runaway mine train roller coaster, an Indian Village, a log flume-style canoe ride, a hiking trail, pack mules, and a shopping complex similar to New Orleans Square at Disneyland.

That was the project's scope in 1969 and by 1971, the majority of the attractions slated to appear with Thunder Mesa were either cancelled or were shortened. The Western River Expedition, the Big Thunder Railway, and the Thunder Mesa Terrace complex were still being planned in 1971 for construction.

Nearby on the riverfront of Frontierland, a little show was planned out in a pine-walled theater. It was also a musical revue, but without a boat or animatronic cowboys. It was originally known as Bear Band and it was planned originally for a Northern California ski resort that Disney was going to operate. Unfortunately, the ski resort (Mineral King) never came to fruition and it was placed in an unassuming theater in Frontierland at WDW.

On 1 October 1971, Walt Disney World opened and the Country Bear Jamboree opened along with the Park. According to Imagineer Chris Merritt, the Bear Band attraction was added to the roster of future Disneyland attractions as early as 1970, which challenged my previously-held belief that the Country Bear Jamboree at Disneyland was hastily added to the Park as a result of the success of the show in Florida. To augment this discovery, I uncovered a 1971 capital expenditure sheet that confirmed this. In fact, WED had really designed Bear Country over the summer of 1971 and it accurately schedule its opening in early 1972.

However, the area north of the Haunted Mansion had been closed in May 1971 and construction walls came up. One of the construction walls surrounding the area had a wonderful sign hinting at what was being built on the other side.

Courtesy of Gorillas Don't Blog, this 1971 construction shot is great because it is a vital part of Disney park history. Look at that sign and read it, especially the penultimate line about being the "wildest show in the wilderness".

So as early as 1971, Disney claimed that an attraction was the wildest in the wilderness. Meanwhile, a young Imagineer by the name of Tony Baxter is working at the WED model shop in Glendale and one of the assignments he was handed was the mine train roller coaster planned for Thunder Mesa at Walt Disney World. Between 1971 and 1974, Baxter worked alongside Marc Davis on Thunder Mesa. At the same time, the Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland attraction had become too costly to maintain and its removal was imminent in the early 1970's. Ironically, Marc Davis who designed the Nature's Wonderland aspect of the attraction was trying to revitalize it in the mid-1970's. Unfortunately, it was due to close by the end of the decade to be replaced with a different attraction. Since Marc's WRE wasn't getting anywhere in Florida, he convinced Disneyland management to build his attraction until Tony's Big Thunder Mesa Railroad idea had impressed them enough to build it at Disneyland. Some sources have suggested that Tony designed it as early as 1971 to help replace the MTTWN attraction.

Construction on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland began in 1977 after the Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland had closed that January and it continued through 1978 and 1979. Big Thunder was supposed to be operating in early 1979, but delays set it back to the summer and later to September. Meanwhile, construction on the planned site of Thunder Mesa began in January 1979 after years of remaining barren. Of course, Big Thunder Mountain was built on that site and opened in November 1980.

Interestingly, both versions of the attraction were marketed as the Wildest Ride in the Wilderness.

There are striking similarities between the Big Thunder ride and the Country Bear show. Both were marketed as being the "wildest attraction in the wilderness". The area that housed the CBJ at Disneyland was named Bear Country and at the nearby Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland, there was a section named Bear Country, possibly intended to continue that name after the mine train had closed (as it was projected in the early 1970's). Another interesting tidbit is how the Frontierland in Florida had one E-Ticket attraction upon opening in 1971 until 1980 and the Big Thunder Railroad was the only E-Ticket in Disneyland's Frontierland from the time it opened in 1979 until the ride coupon system was overhauled in the early 1980's. It's funny because Florida's CBJ was awaiting the Western River Expedition until BTMR stole its thunder (literally and figuratively) and the same thing happened in California, albeit California's Bear Band had their own Land.



At any rate, part of Big Thunder's history interacts with the history of Bear Band and both shows are a testament to Disney's superb brand of storytelling.