Splash Mountain

Image: Disney

Not every song performed in tandem with a Disney attraction was created specifically for the ride. More and more, Disney takes existing popular songs from their extensive library and introduces them into themed attractions. The standard practice of today wasn’t the norm in 1989 when Disneyland introduced Splash Mountain for the first time.

Rather than contracting a composer to build something original with Sherman Brothers-esque lyrics such as ‘Splash Splash Splash goes the mountain’, the designers of the attraction did something risky. They chose to recreate the characters of the long discredited Disney movie, Song of the South. One of the driving impetuses for the decision is that for all its tasteless caricatures, the film offers one of the finest soundtracks in the history of Disney. To that end, Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah was the Let It Go of 1947 and remains a timeless classic 70 years later.

When Imagineers plotted their strategy for a water-based ride with a splash on that end, they settled on characters from Song of the South as the most entertaining. Independent of how you feel about the movie, Brer Rabbit’s misguided search for the Laughing Place is memorable and fun as a theme park story. As I wrote in Behind the Ride: Splash Mountain, Disney also stacked the deck by featuring the best quartet of musical interludes for a theme park attraction.

While Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah is the obvious inclusion due to its ubiquity in the history of Disney musical compilations (any greatest hits release without it is inaccurately named), Splash Mountain isn’t a one-hit wonder. Instead, it also features Everybody Has a Laughing Place, Burrow’s Lament, and How Do You Do to provide a diverse grouping of songs throughout one of the longest rides at any Disney theme park. And each of them work brilliantly.

Image: Disney

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s How Do You Do that sticks with me the longest even though the climax of the ride rewards the passenger with a roaring celebratory offering of Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah. Part of the explanation for this is that How Do You Do plays twice during the boat ride, once as a musical version and then later with its undeniably catchy lyrical hook.

The explanation for the powerful integration of music with Splash Mountain is its original location at Disneyland. The attraction is positioned close to New Orleans Square. As such, happy jazz music with a heavy dose of big band orchestral flavor meshes organically with both the original movie and the themed land of the Happiest Place on Earth.

At Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, the setting is Frontierland. For this reason, the music here offers more of a country vibe to remain thematic. The jazz instruments aren’t in use here. Instead, Splash Mountain in Orlando features banjoes and harmonicas, which is more appropriate anyway. After all, the park is only a few hours away from the actual setting of The Song of the South.

At all the theme parks that feature Splash Mountain, The Song of the South soundtrack permeates not just throughout the ride itself but also in the line queue. Instrumental versions of five other songs play on a 25-minute loop. Several of the songs are the same, although the Orlando version also includes some non-Disney titles such as Old MacDonald Had a Farm to play up the southern locality. Due to all the music playing while waiting in line, Splash Mountain has done more for soundtrack sales of Song of the South than anything since the 1947 Academy Awards.

Image: Disney

While perfecting the ride, Disney chose to re-record the classic songs to give them a fresher sound than the then 40-year-old versions. Three sisters who were all Disney cast members at the time performed Burrow’s Lament and Everybody Has a Laughing Place. A 29-piece recording act with the un-Disney name of The Floozies provided the voices for the bullfrogs and other characters throughout the ride and in the song How Do You Do. Finally, a choir of 75 members worked together to construct one of the toe-tapping-est versions of Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah known to man.

Disney Imagineers spent more than 80 hours per Splash Mountain AA to assure that their movements matched the musical accompaniments. This attention to detail explains why Splash Mountain has maintained its consistent popularity for almost 30 years now. The meshing of music and attraction here is the gold standard.

Given the above, it’s understandable why so many of your favorite Disney rides automatically remind you of a certain song. That mental association is intentional. Imagineers have used specific but subtle methods to set your mood as you enjoy the attractions in some cases. In others, they’ve simply played the same lyric from the same song over and over again until you’re ready to shove Q-Tips all the way into your eardrums to make the noise stop. Oddly, both methods are equally effective.  

Whichever one you prefer, you’ve spent your whole life enjoying the nuanced sounds of countless Disney classics as you waited in line for attractions. Then, you heard other masterpieces while enjoying the actual rides. Disney prioritizes the setting of mood as one of the integral elements of theme park design. While sights and scents are also important, music is the universal language that speaks directly to your soul.

Walt Disney understood this, which is why he hired the Sherman Brothers and assigned them to theme park attractions just as often as movie soundtracks. His philosophy also explains why he sometimes asked Imagineers working on rides to come up with the complementary sounds. Uncle Walt knew that the employees most intimately involved with the creative process offered the best ideas, even if those workers didn’t know they were capable of such artistry. Because of his bold perspective on the mechanics of the theme park experience, vacationers continue to enjoy many classic songs from the early Disney movie catalog in their modern formats as Disney attractions today. And if the price of such virtuosity is an earworm that lasts for months, that’s a small price to pay, right? RIGHT???