Woke Disney To Destroy Popular ‘Frontierland’ Attraction

Walt Disney designed his extraordinary theme parks as homages to America’s history, spirit, and way of life. This has always been particularly apparent when entering Main Street U.S.A, with its idyllic depiction of an early 20th-century small town, and in Frontierland, with its celebration of America’s settlement of the West. Now Disney’s current leadership has announced that it will be demolishing essentially all of Frontierland at the Magic Kingdom in Florida.

Disney announced that it plans to fill in the entire Rivers of America waterway and eliminate Tom Sawyer Island. Disney already shuttered the Frontier Shootin’ Arcade earlier this year to make way for a Disney Vacation Club member lounge. After all of this destruction, there will be essentially nothing left of Frontierland at Walt Disney World, save for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad — but that’s a ride, not a land. (For now, Disneyland’s Frontierland, in California, will survive.)

In place of all this, Disney plans to build two new rides based on “Cars,” the 2006 film that Pixar made for Disney.

The planned destruction of iconic Frontierland matters on an educational and cultural level, not just an entertainment level. The Magic Kingdom is the most-visited amusement park in the world, attracting nearly 18 million visitors annually. That’s more than the combined populations of Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada. No doubt, many children’s perceptions of America have been influenced by what they’ve seen and experienced there, just as Walt intended. Here’s what he said about Frontierland:

Here we experience the story of our country’s past … the colorful drama of frontier America in the exciting days of the covered wagon and the stagecoach, the advent of the railroad and the romantic riverboat. Frontierland is a tribute to the faith, courage and ingenuity of the pioneers who blazed the trails across America.

Tom Sawyer Island is the only place in the Magic Kingdom where kids can roam free and explore on their own, free to use their imaginations (something Disney claims to value). At the fort on that island, my kids gleefully shot the fake rifles out the second-floor windows at imagined attackers. Now that fort, following the Frontier Shootin’ Arcade, will be eliminated, thereby removing the scourge of toy guns from the Magic Kingdom.

There’s no reason why Disney needs to destroy Frontierland in order to add “Cars” rides. Walt Disney World (which is almost twice the size of Manhattan) has about 50 times as much land as the Disneyland Resort, and the Magic Kingdom itself is bigger than Disneyland Park. Yet Disneyland managed to add a new Star Wars land without destroying any of its existing lands. This new plan appears to involve destruction by choice.

Disney’s decision represents not only a loss of Americana and an abandonment of Walt’s design, but also an affront to aesthetic excellence. Frontierland, with its long wooden walkways abutting tranquil waters, is perhaps the most aesthetically appealing part of the Disney parks. It is certainly the most serene part of the Magic Kingdom. Indeed, it is this aspect of the decision — to eliminate so much charming beauty and relaxing atmosphere just to build two new rides — that seems to have rankled even Disney’s usual defenders.

For example, Disney Tourist Blog’s Tom Bricker, who provides perhaps the best guide to visiting the Disney parks but is reluctant to criticize Disney’s decisions too harshly or its politics at all, writes of Disney’s decision, “It’s not exactly paving over paradise to put up a parking lot, but it’s kinda close.” Bricker rightly worries that this decision to “replace tranquil waters and a lush area that offer[s] a lovely escape from the crowds and chaos of Magic Kingdom [with] almost the exact opposite of that” is something that “could irreparably damage the feel” of the park.

A frequent Disney critic, known as WDW Pro, says that “Disney is a little bit shocked” by the backlash it has received, writing, “What has caught Disney off-guard is that their ‘influencers’ that typically are positive about anything they do, are not being positive about this, and they’re getting outright negative responses.”

But at least to some degree, Disney clearly knew that its decision to destroy Frontierland wouldn’t be popular. That’s why it announced the coming of the new “Cars” attractions at the recent 2024 D23 Expo — a big Disney fan convention — while withholding the news that the building of these new rides would mean the destruction of the heart of Frontierland. That shocking news was revealed only after the attendees had headed for home and couldn’t boo the Disney executives off the stage.

If Disney execs knew that removing such an iconic part of the Magic Kingdom would be unpopular, why do it? It’s certainly possible that current Disney leadership woefully lacks aesthetic taste — that they think the Magic Kingdom would be improved by having less water and more concrete. But it’s not hard to detect the presence of an ulterior motive.

That motive appears to be the same one that led Disney to destroy the beloved and charming Splash Mountain — the most popular ride at the Magic Kingdom according to Tripadvisor — and replace it, after many months of not having anything in that spot at all, with the inferior Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, which Disney now can’t even keep in operation. (It’s experiencing “major reliability woes and extensive daily downtime,” reports Bricker.)

Splash Mountain had to be closed down because its delightful story — featuring Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox, and Br’er Bear — originated in slave folktales and then was depicted in the Disney film “Song of the South.” “The Princess and the Frog” (starring Princess Tiana), in contrast, is a story about a fictional black character that was written mostly by white guys, who based their story on a European fairy tale. Somehow, in the warped minds of woke censors, that makes it more “equitable.”

Tiana’s Bayou Adventure doesn’t really belong in Frontierland — Splash Mountain at least looked like it did — which seems to have gotten Disney’s wheels turning about what else is wrong with that land. Fortunately, Disney has a group dedicated to just such a purpose. That group, called Disney Stories Matter, has brought in outside racial and sexual activists to complement existing employees’ leftist efforts to find fault with all things Western or American.

As a result of this group’s “insights,” Disney has slapped advisory warnings on many of its classic movies, such as — amazingly — “Fantasia,” haughtily proclaiming, “This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now.” Walt, of course, made “Fantasia,” which the American Film Institute rated as the 58th greatest film of all time.

The Disney movie Disclaimer also says, “Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.” But in the case of Frontierland, they’ve apparently just decided to remove the content.

Disney Stories Matter also recently took aim at Tinker Bell — and, as a result, she reportedly no longer greets guests at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom. The fairy’s sin? She is “body conscious” and “jealous of Peter Pan’s attention.” In other words, she’s a male-loving female who wants to look good.

Imagine what Disney Stories Matter must think of Walt Disney’s own description of Frontierland.

Contrast Walt’s description of that land as “a tribute to the faith, courage and ingenuity of the pioneers” with this drivel from current Disney Parks head Josh D’Amaro, who “reimagines” (to use a Disney word) Frontierland as something essentially divorced from actual Americans who explored the frontier:

The American West has always been about keeping your eyes on the horizon…believing in yourself, carving your own path, and striving toward success. That goes for miners in the mountains, bears from the country, a princess from the bayou…or a race-car from the big city.

WDW Pro reports that a source within the company told him that the backlash over this plan might be causing Disney to reconsider and potentially keep the southern halves of Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island, but Disney has said nothing publicly to that effect.

Those who want to register their opposition to Disney’s decision to destroy Frontierland might want to email Walt Disney World’s Guest Communications: [email protected] — as the company certainly won’t change direction without a sufficient public outcry. At some point, Disney might decide to start valuing what it’s guests (or potential guests) want, especially since it has just experienced its lowest week of attendance at the Magic Kingdom since the Delta strain of Covid was spreading during the fall of 2021.

This decision by Disney is truly unprecedented. Frontierland was there on opening day at Disneyland on July 17, 1955, and on opening day at Walt Disney World on October 1, 1971. It has Walt’s fingerprints all over it. It is a central element of that great American’s design.

Never before has the company deviated so dramatically from Walt’s own design for his parks. Never before has it closed one of Walt’s lands. Indeed, even now, Disney is not admitting to closing Frontierland. To borrow Barack Obama’s famous formulation, they’re just “fundamentally transforming” it, leaving behind almost nothing of Walt’s Frontierland to experience.

This reflects the woke Left’s larger goal. Its operating principle is destruction. Americanists — those who love America, its history, and its way of life — need to recognize the Left’s desire to destroy and meet it with an even stronger desire to preserve.

Jeffrey H. Anderson is president of the American Main Street Initiative and served as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2017 to 2021.