Country Bear Jamboree
[Disney Vacation Planner]
At A Glance |
VERY popular stage show in
Frontierland - advanced bookings recommended. |
Located in Grizzly Hall, Frontierland, just along the street
from the Frontierland Shootin Arcade, the Country Bear Jamboree
or Vacation Hoedown, is a 15 minute hilarious stage show performed
by Audio-Animatronic characters.
The show is based around the songs of 18 bears, who are introduced
by Henry, The Master of Ceremonies, who keeps the show together.
Country and western music, interwoven with "backwoods" humor,
makes for a delightful show.
You'll particularly like it if you like country music, but if
you don't like country, then you'll probably still enjoy it for
it's "send-up" qualities.
The idea for the Country Bear Jamboree attraction was formed
in the mid-1960s when Walt Disney Productions was involved in
the development of the Mineral King Valley area of California
into a ski resort. One of the proposed ideas for the resort was
an Audio-Animatronics bear-band show, featuring singing bears
of all sizes and shapes.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view
the Mineral King project was shelved but the concept of the bear-band
show was included in the plans for WALT DISNEY WORLD. The main
theme of the Country Bear Jamboree was conceived by Walt in 1966.
Originally he planned to build the attraction around bear-characters
who could laugh, talk, and play musical instruments.
He also wanted the bears to look as strange as they sounded and
to further individualize the Country Bear Jamboree performers,
each one was given a distinctive personality, voices, and mannerisms
to match their appearance.
Various different styles of music were experimented with, ranging
from Dixieland to hillbilly and, finally, the country music theme
was decided on as the logical choice. This theme set the stage
for the entire show and the Country Bear Jamboree attraction made
its debut in October, 1971 with the opening of WALT DISNEY WORLD.
In November, 1984 the Country Bear Jamboree show was changed
for the first time to host a seasonal Christmas special, which
ran from just after Thanksgiving to New Year's day. The holiday
show features a down home country Christmas spirit with new songs
and traditional favorites. Festive costumes and scenery give a
feeling of Christmas in the back woods, in a show that has remained
largely unchanged.
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