Now ye’ve done it! Ye went too far!
Over at Re-Imagineering, it’s a world of tears, indeed. Disney is apparently preparing to rehab the Small World ride.
I’m going to give people a moment to get the snickers out of their system. Usually, any mention of “small world” in my circle of friends prompts a chorus of people proudly proclaiming, “You know the people who wrote that song apologized for having released it?”
Now that that’s out of the way, here’s the thing – the Disneyland Small World ride is pretty much as it was when it premiered at the World’s Fair. It has been closed to be furnished with deeper boat flumes to handle the modern era’s “heavier boatloads.” While that technical issue was being cleared up, however, some people apparently got the idea that it was time to wipe out the last vestiges of Mary Blair’s legacy.
Unfortunately W.D.I. has taken ill advantage of the downtime by staking out areas throughout the attraction to place a selection of smiling Disney characters to spice up the proceedings. Imagine a grinning Stitch in Hawaii, a demure Belle in Paris, a Peter Pan in London.
Beyond the crass commercialization of a long-cherished work of art (yeah, I called an amusement park ride a work of art – I went there) which is par for the course when it comes to Disney, they’ve decided to make one other big change.
And in one of the most egregious and downright disgusting decisions in Disney theme park history, the gorgeous New Guinea rainforest scene, replete with some of Mary Blair’s most whimsical character creations (a crocodile with an umbrella, colorful birds hatching from eggs) and her drummer children with Tiki Masks on the opposite shore will be replaced with a Hooray for U.S.A sequence.
Hooray for the U.S.A.
Hm.
Let me explain a little something about the Small World ride for the people who might have come in late.
Mary Blair specifically designed the Small World ride that American audiences would see without a representation of America. Famously, the only mention of America in the ride is a cowboy and Indian at the very end of the ride. You travel all over the world, but you never see America.
Why?
Because you’re an American audience, and the ride is about the world. Mary Blair wanted American audiences to step away from self-congratulation for a moment and consider the rest of the world. What it meant to truly understand other lands and people.
Slapping a “Hooray for the U.S.A.” segment right in the middle of the ride given its original concept is more than just an annoying commercial decision – it’s a giant finger flipped in the direction of, well, everybody. It’s contrary to the message of the original.
And don’t get me started about the significance of destroying the rainforest segment to do that.
March 16th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
[...] even now sort makes me happy as I sing along to it in my head. So I was a little upset to hear the unnecessary “improvements” that Disney has in store for the [...]