Recently, I talked to the esteemed Chris Merritt about his magnum opus, "Marc Davis in His Own Words: Imagineering the Disney Theme Parks" and I asked him about Marc's supposed involvement in the never-built, but nonetheless storied Riverfront Square concept at WED in the early 1960's. He told me that he was not able to find any art Marc did for the idea and it's more than likely that he never contributed to it. So as someone who has chronicled the history of the Western River Expedition, or at least, talked about it from a historical perspective, I have to correct what I feel is a valuable piece of information.
The Western River Expedition was something that began its life sometime in 1967 as a replacement for the Pirates when it came to the Florida Park. It had nothing to do with the Lewis and Clark Expedition boat ride that was planned in 1963 from our new understanding. It's understandable, however, in a previous age of relative "ignorance" that we believed they were part of the same idea and had a common history that strengthened its timeframe by adding four years of gestation as a concept. Notably, the same was suggested about other attractions. For example, the past understanding that Marc was consulted by Walt in 1962 to visit Disneyland to improve the Jungle Cruise, Santa Fe-Disneyland Railroad, or Nature's Wonderland had betrayed two years of improvements that were made to the park. Oddly enough, I encountered the same trap while chronicling the history of Disney World's Pirates of the Caribbean.
So we probably knew that WDW Pirates had a distinct identity in its architectural form, one that led to the insertion of a classic Marc Davis gag. Well, my understanding and the understanding of many of us, including those who worked at the park in the 70's, was that the chess scene was inserted into the queue in late 1973 and was a fixture of the environment since, but now we know that memory plays tricks on us and that it was installed in 1977.
Instead of going back and changing the past, I'm putting it out that "WRE did not come from RFS."
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