Yesterday, Disney announced that they were re-theming Splash Mountain to The Princess and the Frog. While many on social media and in the media were happy about the announcement, there’s a growing contingent of Disney fans who don’t want the classic attraction to change.
A petition on Change.org is calling for Disney to rethink the re-theming, and it currently has more than twice the number of signatures the petition to change it has.
Currently, nearly 50,000 people have signed the petition for Disney to keep the flume ride as-is. The petition to change Splash Mountain to The Princess and the Frog amassed only 21,000.
Yet the media keeps incorrectly pointing to the petition — created only a few weeks ago — as the reason Disney is re-theming the ride.
In Disney’s own press release, they stated that this was in the pipeline since at least last year. And honestly, we’ve been hearing rumblings for years that Disney was looking to re-theme the attraction, which has ties to the controversial, long vaulted Disney film Song of the South.
Given everything going on in the country right now, it has likely just expedited Disney’s plans for the attraction.
Every change to classic Disney attractions always tends to split the Disney fandom right down the middle. This change is going to be especially polarizing given the political climate, and there’s already rumors of many more changes to come as Disney is reportedly looking at many attractions that aren’t, well, all that “politically correct” by today’s standards.
While our own feelings about the change are mixed, it’s highly unlikely that Disney will cancel its plans for the ride as they’ve already made such a big media spectacle out of announcing the re-theming. I don’t even think a million petitioners could change Disney’s mind at this point.
But hey, maybe Disney will make it up to us by giving Journey Into Imagination a desperately needed overhaul… and bring back Dreamfinder.
Eh, it’s worth a shot.
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