Hoot Gibson Should've Killed Rivers Of America, Not Lightning McQueen
If Rivers had to go, it should’ve gone out guns blazing in a western shoot out instead of a cartoon hit and run.
The life of a Disney attraction is a capricious one.
Disney’s a theme park — not to be confused with an amusement park. So, its attractions are oriented to suit the environment they’re set in. Thrills second, ambience first.
Naturally, dark rides and old mills tailor right nicely into the objective of a theme park. Lavishly themed roller coasters get to jump in the bandwagon too.
Those all tend to be branded as E-tickets. They’re the bigger headliners, the meat and potatoes of the park’s lineup.
But the filler… the seasonings and garnishes that elevates the meal to Michelin status… they get lauded as hidden gems, underrated experiences that bring immersion to the theme park wonderland. At least, just enough people sing those praises to save their presence before enough people have passed them by to incur their end.
Rivers of America is one such feature that homes the Liberty Square Riverboat and Tom Sawyer Island.
Quaint. Charming. Overlooked. Boring.
Rivers is either appreciated for being tranquil, scenic, a refreshing change of pace or ignored as unremarkable, uninteresting, not worth the time it takes up.
To the latter end, Disney recognizes that alternatively as not worth the space it takes up.
Rivers of America is very much a stop and smell the roses experience as opposed to a shiny, flashy attraction to check off a bucket list. It’s the opportunity to explore Frontierland and Liberty Square as a world rather than just a theme park land.
As if, when the Imagineers were figuring out what would be in these areas, they started with “What would be in a western town or colonial plaza?” instead of “What rides can we make fit in this area?”
But, as laid out above, this nature can be a double-edged sword for an attraction.
Flash forward to when Disney announced that Rivers of America would be closing to make way for a new Cars themed attraction, heavily opinionated reactions were swift and fractured.
For some, it was a gut punch. The Liberty Belle and Tom Sawyer Island had long been touchstones of that different kind of magic — slower, quieter riverboat rides and winding walking trails. The unique angles of Big Thunder Mountain at golden hour, moment of stumbling across a cave carved into the hillside with no signage, the absence of long lines and Lightning Lanes…
A symphony of serenity replaced by the roar of a race car’s engine.
Tonal whiplash.
“Grim, grinning ghosts come out to-”
“KACHOW!”
Even those who never spared a second glance at the Liberty Belle side-eyed the announcement. Cars? There? Not on the other side of Frontierland?
Thematically, it’s an oil slick on parchment. A neon tire shop parked next to a Gothic manor house. A desert drying up a river to dust.
The kind of spatial decision that makes Haunted Mansion feel less like a portal into the macabre and more like a roadside haunted house you pass on the way to a gas station.
The medley of backlash has been a combination of angry preservationists and regular park goers with a sense of aesthetic continuity — the passionately invested and the casual collective — all singing in unison that Cars needs to find another rest stop.
They didn’t even need to be fans of Rivers to be skeptics of Radiator Springs. Epcot already has Test Track. Art of Animation already has Cars. Why wedge it into Magic Kingdom at the expense of Liberty Square and Frontierland?
It’s mildly comical to scroll the replies and comment sections of every post Disney does to market the proposed Cars attraction:
“No one wants this.”
“I can literally do what this ride will in my own backyard.”
“This will ruin Frontierland and Magic Kingdom forever.”
“Imagine if Disney listened to their loyal guests instead of replacing us with influencers and bloggers who think everything they do is amazing. No one wants this ride.”
These are comments repeated the most often in the entire thread with hundreds of likes each. Not just one-off comments scattered between other reactions. I mean, it’s needle in a haystack to find comments neutral, much less, supportive of this move.
The fanfare from this, and previous ride closures, does make me wonder how much it would take before Disney ever listened to their fanbase. Cancel the closure of an attraction, change course on the types of new attractions they open, shift gears on what films they put out…
The eighth world wonder.
Now, there are those who met the announcement with indifference. To them, the Rivers of America was dead space. All that real estate taken up by a slow boat and a glorified playground. No E-ticket draw, no IP anchor, no marketable merch shelf. The Liberty Belle didn’t have a Genie+ return time. Tom Sawyer didn’t have a character meet-and-greet. And what they did have was untapped land. Land that, in the eyes of bottom-line optimizers, could be put to “better use.”
But even within that group, the choice of Cars still gets mixed reactions. A general consensus being: if you’re going to build something new, build something worthy (an assuredly subjective matter). Yet as it stands, Lightning McQueen is not worthy.
Of my curiosities spurred by Rivers of America’s demise, my most prevalent is so — would Hoot Gibson be worthy?
If Rivers of America has to go, end of story, how much different would people’s reactions be if Western River Expedition was replacing it?
An attraction concept that Disney fans have begged for since the 1970s. Legendary Imagineer Marc Davis’ magnum opus. Destined for Frontierland from the start but stalled at every turn around the riverbend.
Western River Expedition was meant to be the anchor of Frontierland, the area’s headlining attraction. A sprawling, show-stopping, character-rich western tableau realized in full technicolor by Marc Davis and artistry inspired by Mary Blair. Cowboys on cantankerous horses, outlaw shootouts, theatrical saloon gags, jailhouse shenanigans, and a musical ghost town narrated by a mechanically precocious owl named Hoot Gibson.
Pirates of the Caribbean for the American frontier — back when Pirates wasn’t a sure thing in Florida. Imagineers deliberately abbreviated Magic Kingdom’s version of POTC because they didn’t want two major boat rides stepping on each other’s boots. Scenes cut from Pirates that would’ve been too similar to scenes in Western River.
But now, somehow, that logic is being reversed by Disney. Pirates exists so Western River Expedition can’t…
…even though Pirates was shortened so Western River could coincide, now Western River can’t because of Pirates?
The logic ain’t logic-ing.
That’s a smokescreen.
Because the two were never redundant. Not in tone, not in theme, not in art style. Pirates is a gritty, saltwater spectacle swashbuckling and colonial chaos. Western River was high desert absurdism, a cartoonish frontier fever dream. Dry Gulch, not Tortuga. Cowboys and ghost towns, not cannonballs and cursed treasure. There’s room for both. There was always room for both.
And with the closure of Rivers of America, that room just got a whole lot bigger.
The beauty is, it doesn’t even have to be an either/or situation. Western River Expedition could rise without completely razing the waterway. Keep portions of the river intact.
That’s how you evolve a park. Preserve what works and introduce what dazzles.
I dare say: if Western River Expedition were announced in place of Cars, the public reaction wouldn’t be a total mutiny. It would feel like a bittersweet handoff. A goodbye to one kind of storytelling… in service of another. And for once, the end of a legacy wouldn’t feel like a cynical calculation.
It would signal, through action and not PR statements, that sometimes Disney does listen to its loyal guests (after years of persistence). Tell a tale, not of IP overload, but of frontier mythos, dusty trails, and dynamite gags — told by a darling animatronic owl.
If the Rivers have to run dry, where better than Dry Gulch? Trade one river for a Western River. Hoot Gibson is far more deserving of the perch in Frontierland than Lightning McQueen.
We wants the Western River Expedition!
“Well, that's my story, folks. I sure hope you'll come back and see me in the future, at the Western River Expedition right here in Walt Disney World.”
-Hoot Gibson
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