Disney's Jungle Cruise Ride Getting Revamp
ORLANDO (CBSMiami/CNN) - The popular Jungle Cruise ride at the Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom in Orlando and at Disneyland in California will be getting a makeover that removes scenes some guests viewed as racist.
The company said they will be preserving the storyline while focusing more on respecting diversity.
The ride, one of the last attractions personally overseen by Walt Disney himself, has not aged as gracefully as some other attractions. Although the ride was inspired by nature documentaries, one of the sights along the river route is a scene of "natives," which depicts them as wild, primitive, and threatening.
In a press release, Disney confirmed the ride's upcoming overhaul. Among the changes will be a new animated skipper character.
"As Imagineers, it is our responsibility to ensure experiences we create and stories we share reflect the voices and perspective of the world around us," said Carmen Smith, creative development and inclusion strategies executive at Walt Disney Imagineering, in a statement.
A "Jungle Cruise" movie starring Emily Blunt, Jesse Plemons, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (as the skipper) is due out later in 2021. However, Disney has not confirmed whether there will be any overlap between the movie and the ride.
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Jungle Cruise is one of several Disney attractions called out in the past few years for distasteful imagery.
The popular Splash Mountain log flume ride originally featured characters from "Song of the South," a story set in the antebellum South whose cringe-worthy depictions of Black people have kept it mostly hidden in the company's vault. Last year, Disney announced that it would reconfigure the ride to include characters from 2009's "The Princess and the Frog," the first Disney movie with a Black princess lead.
The Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which inspired the film franchise of the same name, also came under scrutiny for its animatronic scenes of the pirates selling female captives. In 2017, the main "wench" figure was converted into a female pirate, and the pirates now auction off non-human loot.
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