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.