Photo from Disneyland! I love that letterhead.
And here’s the nice press photo of Wendell our Mandolin Maestro. Boy is he ever looking shinny and new. Where do you suppose Wendell is these days? In storage for his triumphant return one day? Shipped to Florida for spare parts? Tossed in the dreaded “dumpster” (gasp)?
7 comments:
Bring Country Bear Jamboree back! To save space, they could just build one theater like WDW's. Heck, it could go into DCA's Grizzly River area. They could even make a restaurant show out of it....kind of like Chuck E. Cheese's. After all, the Tiki Room was originally supposed to be a restaurant show. Okay, I'll stop my wishful thinking because we all know it isn't going to happen.
I've wondered what happened to these figures myself. I remember seeing photos on the internet right after the show was removed, of the bears all piled up in the back of a flatbed truck on the freeway. From what I remember, the "fur" had all been taken off of them. Hmmmm, I'm going to do an internet search for those photos and see what comes up.
Bring back the bears! What is Pooh - a bear from the Southeast of England, lest we forget - doing on the shores of the Rivers of America, anyway? Splash Mountain and the Country Bears continued the river's Southern theming beyond New Orleans Square. Pooh makes a mockery of the whole area! And, unlike Tokyo, Anaheim didn't even get the good version of the Pooh ride! If they ever try to remove the show from WDW there will be rioting in the streets! Bring back the bears!
... At the risk of having stones thrown at me... "CB Jamboree" was always my least favorite favorite of the major "AA" attractions at Disneyland.
The first problem is the modeling on the characters - I feel they completely miss the mark of Anderson's drawings. It seems like every character was bucktoothed, and all have a funny fur/flesh boundary line on the face that looked way too much like big talking Mattel dolls.
The other is the way the show is structured and the tunes selected. There's no flow, it always seemed like random elements thrown together.
TokyoMagic; Those would be amazing photos. Trucked off to where I wonder? If they still have it(???) putting it in the Grizzly River area is a no brainer!
PeglegPete; I boycotted the Pooh ride until last year, when I finally saw it I was only 97 1/2% as disappointed as I thought I would be. It give its a D-
Katella Gate: No stones thrown from me, I'll even meet you half way on your assessment of CBJ. As a kid it freaked me out and I did not like it. Those faces are scary and you are dead on with your "big talking Mattel dolls" observation - Bravo! I could never quite put my finger on it, but that fits perfect.
As I grew older and became a Disneyland Fan(atic) I began to appreciate CBJ more for the technical complexity of the whole thing; It's a bunch of robots on a stage playing instruments and singing and oh yeah, they supposed to be bears. Having just seen the CBJ last summer in Florida, I'm still mesmerized by all the movement.
You are correct, the show is corny and doesn't really have a story line, maybe that part of its charm, they are just a bunch of Country Bears...
Oops, I forgot to do a search last night for those photos. They might have been on the 5 fwy heading up to Burbank or Glendale. Do they still build stuff in Glendale?
I thought the set-up of the show was very clever with the turntables allowing them to use more than one figure behind each curtain.....and Teddi Bara coming down from the ceiling! Oh and the talking trophy heads! Sorry, I'm obviously a fan. I was about 7 or 8 when I first saw the show and I loved it. I think I liked the Christmas show even better. The Vacation version.....uh, not so much!
Tokyo Disneyland still switches the sets and costumes to show all three versions throughout the year.
It truly was:
"A hunny of a place since '72..."
Critter Country is a much more boring place because of the loss of CBJ. Thanks for the post!
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