Was Country Bear Jamboree brought to Disneyland due to its popularity in Florida and built in record time?

[DL-fan]

The origainal Country Bear Jamboree opened on Oct 1, 1971 at the Magic Kingdom while the Disneyland version opened five months later on Mar 4, 1972. It’s always been said that CBJ came to Disneyland because the company saw how popular it was at WDW but did they really accomplish that feat in five months or less?

This was an entirely new land in its own right regardless of size. It included the two theater CBJ as well as an arcade, the Mile Long Bar, a store and bathrooms while the restaurant opened later in September. It’s not really known when the Indian Village actually closed but the Summer 1971 park maps still indicate that it was there at that time but even then, I don’t think they would close it until after summer around September prior to the attraction opening at WDW in October.

I know Disney worked faster back then but if they accomplished building all this in 4-5 months after the attraction opened in Florida, that would be crazy.

 

[TP2000]

The Country Bear Jamboree concept was originally created in the mid 1960's for the Mineral King ski resort project in the Sierras that Walt never got built.

Construction moved much faster back then, but the addition of the Jamboree to both WDW and Disneyland was decided at the same time. The opening was staggered to move the costs for the Company for Disneyland into fiscal year '72, while the costs for the Company for WDW was covered by fiscal year '71.

It was mostly a tax and spend decision, also aided by a much smaller Company and a much smaller Imagineering department that would have needed to use the same Imagineers that got the show programmed and running in Florida to fly back and do the same thing at Disneyland for a few months before it could open at Disneyland.

Only at Disneyland did the attraction have two theaters, roughly doubling its hourly capacity to 1,800 guests or more for the Disneyland show. But even that construction/cost decision would have been made a few years earlier before the show opened to wild success at WDW six months before it opened at Disneyland.

 

[TP2000]

It should also be noted, the Indian Village had been there for 15 years at that time. And the Indian War Canoes were 15 years old.

The decision to rename and retheme the Indian War Canoes to the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes was partly done as a reaction to the Indian Rights movement of the late 60's and early 70's; a decision to not label all of America's Indians as "war-like" and instead change the ride into a Davy Crockett theme.

That entire Bear Country project all gelled quite nicely for the time and place and era, both financially and culturally.

 

[DL-fan]

The Country Bear Jamboree concept was originally created in the mid 1960's for the Mineral King ski resort project in the Sierras that Walt never got built.

Construction moved much faster back then, but the addition of the Jamboree to both WDW and Disneyland was decided at the same time. The opening was staggered to move the costs for the Company for Disneyland into fiscal year '72, while the costs for the Company for WDW was covered by fiscal year '71.

It was mostly a tax and spend decision, also aided by a much smaller Company and a much smaller Imagineering department that would have needed to use the same Imagineers that got the show programmed and running in Florida to fly back and do the same thing at Disneyland for a few months before it could open at Disneyland.

Only at Disneyland did the attraction have two theaters, roughly doubling its hourly capacity to 1,800 guests or more for the Disneyland show. But even that construction/cost decision would have been made a few years earlier before the show opened to wild success at WDW six months before it opened at Disneyland.

Thanks TP, awesome reply!!! So was it like when the company built the Haunted Mansion animatronics for both MK and DL at the same time?

 

[PiratesMansion]

The Country Bear Jamboree concept was originally created in the mid 1960's for the Mineral King ski resort project in the Sierras that Walt never got built.

Construction moved much faster back then, but the addition of the Jamboree to both WDW and Disneyland was decided at the same time. The opening was staggered to move the costs for the Company for Disneyland into fiscal year '72, while the costs for the Company for WDW was covered by fiscal year '71.

It was mostly a tax and spend decision, also aided by a much smaller Company and a much smaller Imagineering department that would have needed to use the same Imagineers that got the show programmed and running in Florida to fly back and do the same thing at Disneyland for a few months before it could open at Disneyland.

Only at Disneyland did the attraction have two theaters, roughly doubling its hourly capacity to 1,800 guests or more for the Disneyland show. But even that construction/cost decision would have been made a few years earlier before the show opened to wild success at WDW six months before it opened at Disneyland.

The part that confuses me is that it seems clear they decided to add a second theater after the success of Florida's Jamboree, but there's an exceedingly short timeline in which to do that.

Going by the below quote, the success of the show in Florida was part of the reason California got two theaters.

To quote Frank Stanek, as retold in Christopher Merritt's book Marc Davis: In His Own Words, Imagineering the Disney Theme Parks (a God-Tier Disney Parks book for anyone who hasn't gotten it yet):
"...I take the blame for the two theaters, because I was the advocate for that. I thought the Florida thing was such a success-there were big lines out of the show in Florida all the time! So when we wanted to do it at Disneyland, we determined that we needed two theaters to be able to deal with the capacity issues."

WDW opening: October 1971
DL opening: March 1972

There's also a construction picture in the book-labeled Fall 1971, with plenty of visible dirt-at Disneyland advertising Bear Country and CBJ coming Spring 1972.

An adjacent quote from Bill Justice said that the DL theater was designed as a mirror image of Florida's, and so many of the figures had to be programmed backwards and the entire show reprogrammed.

Tight. Timelines.

So when in the heck was the decision made to add the second theater?!?

 

[TP2000]

Thanks TP, awesome reply!!! So was it like when the company built the Haunted Mansion animatronics for both MK and DL at the same time?

It would have been, yes. The openings were just so close together, and the shows were identical once you got the audience through the lobby and into their seats.

 

[DLR92]

It a shame we had to have Winnie the Pooh attraction. Have they decided on a dark ride, the franchise could have a different perspective.

 

[DL-fan]

The part that confuses me is that it seems clear they decided to add a second theater after the success of Florida's Jamboree, but there's an exceedingly short timeline in which to do that.

Going by the below quote, the success of the show in Florida was part of the reason California got two theaters.

To quote Frank Stanek, as retold in Christopher Merritt's book Marc Davis: In His Own Words, Imagineering the Disney Theme Parks (a God-Tier Disney Parks book for anyone who hasn't gotten it yet):
"...I take the blame for the two theaters, because I was the advocate for that. I thought the Florida thing was such a success-there were big lines out of the show in Florida all the time! So when we wanted to do it at Disneyland, we determined that we needed two theaters to be able to deal with the capacity issues."

WDW opening: October 1971
DL opening: March 1972

There's also a construction picture in the book-labeled Fall 1971, with plenty of visible dirt-at Disneyland advertising Bear Country and CBJ coming Spring 1972.

An adjacent quote from Bill Justice said that the DL theater was designed as a mirror image of Florida's, and so many of the figures had to be programmed backwards and the entire show reprogrammed.

Tight. Timelines.

So when in the heck was the decision made to add the second theater?!?

Well they would have to have known CBJ was a success sometime during the same month it opened. I heard on a podcast that the lines for it were so long that it went into the store next fire and even then, that wasn’t enough and had to add switchbacks as well. They must have seen this is a big problem for the Cali version and acted fast and I’m guessing they roughly had 4 months to add another theater adjacent to the one that was already being constructed along with another set of animatronics. Too bad they spent more money and rushed to make it when it wasn’t necessary.

 

[PiratesMansion]

Well they would have to have known CBJ was a success sometime during the same month it opened so I’m guessing they roughly had 4 months to add another theater adjacent to the one that was already being constructed along with another set of animatronics. Too bad they spent more money and rushed to make it when it wasn’t necessary.

I imagine part of the rush was because at that point, it was pretty uncharacteristic of Disneyland to wait ~3 years between new attractions. And in planning the two installations (at least to some extent) to be installed more or less back to back saved a bit of money and labor.

 

[TP2000]

The part that confuses me is that it seems clear they decided to add a second theater after the success of Florida's Jamboree, but there's an exceedingly short timeline in which to do that.

Going by the below quote, the success of the show in Florida was part of the reason California got two theaters.

To quote Frank Stanek, as retold in Christopher Merritt's book Marc Davis: In His Own Words, Imagineering the Disney Theme Parks (a God-Tier Disney Parks book for anyone who hasn't gotten it yet):
"...I take the blame for the two theaters, because I was the advocate for that. I thought the Florida thing was such a success-there were big lines out of the show in Florida all the time! So when we wanted to do it at Disneyland, we determined that we needed two theaters to be able to deal with the capacity issues."

WDW opening: October 1971
DL opening: March 1972

There's also a construction picture in the book-labeled Fall 1971, with plenty of visible dirt-at Disneyland advertising Bear Country and CBJ coming Spring 1972.

An adjacent quote from Bill Justice said that the DL theater was designed as a mirror image of Florida's, and so many of the figures had to be programmed backwards and the entire show reprogrammed.

Tight. Timelines.

So when in the heck was the decision made to add the second theater?!?

As a gentleman of a certain age (ahem), I think I can respectfully say that when it comes to remembering things decades in the past, it's a very wise practice to take anything an old man says about something 30 or 40 or 50 years ago with a grain of salt.

Like you say, the timeline of barely 6 months between the WDW opening and the Disneyland opening is just so darn tight, that it seems impossible they added a second theater just based on the Florida crowds from the first few weeks of October, '71.

I just checked the excellent aerial resources that Orange County takes of its entirety from the air every 10 years, but unfortunately the 1970 photo is at least a few months too early to show anything happening in the Indian Village area. They likely didn't start construction of Bear Country until the Fall of '70, or very early in '71.

My first-pass Google search just now revealed some great construction photos of Bear Country from '71, but nothing aerial that could definitively show they were building a double-theater building by the Summer of '71 well before they would have known the show was extremely popular with East Coast audiences.

I needed a new hobby, anyway. At least a short term one. I'm going to see what I can dig up in the next or two on circa 1971 construction photos or documentation that could prove they went into the deal by early 1971 knowing they were building a two-theater version of the Bear show at Disneyland.

Ironically, they had already boxed themselves in to a one-theater space at WDW because of the island it sits in between Frontierland and Adventurland out there. It never stops making me laugh how the Florida property, endowed with the "blessing of size", always seems to get the smaller/tighter/lesser version of whatever the little, locals-only Disneyland gets.

Space Mountain and Splash Mountain seem to be the only exceptions to that ironic rule.

Everyone go fix yourself a drink, maybe a late winter Irish Coffee, and give me a day or two...

 

[DL-fan]

Everyone go fix yourself a drink, maybe a late winter Irish Coffee, and give me a day or two...

 

[PiratesMansion]

Ironically, they had already boxed themselves in to a one-theater space at WDW because of the island it sits in between Frontierland and Adventurland out there.

Beg pardon, what are you referring to here?

The transitional space next to the WDW theater?

 

[TP2000]

Beg pardon, what are you referring to here?

The transitional space next to the WDW theater?

No, the lack of space behind and around the sole Bears theater at WDW. They landlocked it into that island that forms the southern edge of Frontierland and the northern edge of Adventureland, with other attractions and restaurants and kitchens and what-not all wedged in between.

It was a purposeful decision on their part, driven largely by a maintenance requirement to have maintenance/repair facilities for major Animatronic attractions right next to each other. They did the same thing with Haunted Mansion and It's A Small World at Magic Kingdom Park too, plus the Fantasyland dark rides, the shared maintenance marina for Rivers of America boats and Seven Seas Lagoon boats, etc.

As much as I make fun of TDA making boneheaded decisions based on spreadsheets, while the actual Guest experience in that pesky theme park south of their office building proves otherwise, this was the circa 1968 version of that type of thinking. Build the big Animatronics rides at WDW next to each other, back-to-back, and give them shared maintenance facilities close between them.

The irony here is that when they designed this Adventureland/Frontierland layout around 1968, they were denying themselves the ability to expand the limited capacity of that attraction if it actually hit big with audiences. I'm sure it made sense to the Imagineers, and the more mundane engineers in Disneyland's maintenance department as they were thinking on how to improve an operating mega-park for themselves circa 1967-1970.

Meanwhile, at Disneyland, in 1970-71 they built the show building for the Jamboree out beyond the railroad berm and even with Disneyland's limited space and what was then West Street running right behind Indian Village/Bear Country, they still had plenty of space to purposely build a two-theater show building beyond the berm.

You walked into Disneyland's Country Bear Jamboree at a point just outside the Railroad berm themed as a lodge built into a rocky hillside, but after you handed over your E Ticket to the hostess you walked further down a tunnel that led to the shared lobby of a two-theater warehouse out back. When your show was over, regardless of which theater you were put into by the hostess and the showtime, you walked back through a shared corridor that led back into the park itself.

Double the capacity, double the fun, at least at Disneyland!

Here's a good aerial photo of Bear Country in 1987, when Splash Mountain was under construction, and prior to its reopening as Critter Country in 1989. The red arrow leads you from the entry turnstiles into one of two theaters, and then back out the exit after the show. They could have added a 3rd or 4th theater at Disneyland if they'd wanted to, they'd just need to move the "backstage" maintenance facilities behind the 1971 building.

Whereas at WDW, they had already boxed themselves in to a single-theater format for both the Country Bear Jamboree and the Enchanted Tiki Room by placing both of those opening day '71 shows in a landlocked island between their respective lands.

Kind of a dumb move for WDW's design team, in retrospect. Somehow, Disneyland wins again.

 

[Centauri Space Station]

Kind of a dumb move for WDW's design team, in retrospect. Somehow, Disneyland wins again.

Well on the other hand, the fact that it has limited space pretty much guarantees they keep it as a show and don’t remove it for a ride, while DLs had lots of space making it perfect for a dark ride to take its place.

 

[PiratesMansion]

No, the lack of space behind and around the sole Bears theater at WDW. They landlocked it into that island that forms the southern edge of Frontierland and the northern edge of Adventureland, with other attractions and restaurants and kitchens and what-not all wedged in between.

It was a purposeful decision on their part, driven largely by a maintenance requirement to have maintenance/repair facilities for major Animatronic attractions right next to each other. They did the same thing with Haunted Mansion and It's A Small World at Magic Kingdom Park too, plus the Fantasyland dark rides, the shared maintenance marina for Rivers of America boats and Seven Seas Lagoon boats, etc.

View attachment 909396

As much as I make fun of TDA making boneheaded decisions based on spreadsheets, while the actual Guest experience in that pesky theme park south of their office building proves otherwise, this was the circa 1968 version of that type of thinking. Build the big Animatronics rides at WDW next to each other, back-to-back, and give them shared maintenance facilities close between them.

The irony here is that when they designed this Adventureland/Frontierland layout around 1968, they were denying themselves the ability to expand the limited capacity of that attraction if it actually hit big with audiences. I'm sure it made sense to the Imagineers, and the more mundane engineers in Disneyland's maintenance department as they were thinking on how to improve an operating mega-park for themselves circa 1967-1970.

Meanwhile, at Disneyland, in 1970-71 they built the show building for the Jamboree out beyond the railroad berm and even with Disneyland's limited space and what was then West Street running right behind Indian Village/Bear Country, they still had plenty of space to purposely build a two-theater show building beyond the berm.

You walked into Disneyland's Country Bear Jamboree at a point just outside the Railroad berm themed as a lodge built into a rocky hillside, but after you handed over your E Ticket to the hostess you walked further down a tunnel that led to the shared lobby of a two-theater warehouse out back. When your show was over, regardless of which theater you were put into by the hostess and the showtime, you walked back through a shared corridor that led back into the park itself.

Double the capacity, double the fun, at least at Disneyland!

Here's a good aerial photo of Bear Country in 1987, when Splash Mountain was under construction, and prior to its reopening as Critter Country in 1989. The red arrow leads you from the entry turnstiles into one of two theaters, and then back out the exit after the show. They could have added a 3rd or 4th theater at Disneyland if they'd wanted to, they'd just need to move the "backstage" maintenance facilities behind the 1971 building.

View attachment 909397

Whereas at WDW, they had already boxed themselves in to a single-theater format for both the Country Bear Jamboree and the Enchanted Tiki Room by placing both of those opening day '71 shows in a landlocked island between their respective lands.

Kind of a dumb move for WDW's design team, in retrospect. Somehow, Disneyland wins again.

To be fair, MK was organized the way it was for logical, maintenance-related reasons. And since it was designed by the exact same people that were very familiar with an operating Disneyland of the same era, I'm going to assume they weren't being total idiots in designing the AA attractions to facilitate easier maintenance. As I've said in the past, the fact that the place is often run incompetently now does not mean that was always the case or that it was the design intent for WED to make an inferior Disneyland from the jump.

And at any rate, the argument could be made that *both* parks screwed up here: WDW for underestimating the drawing power of CBJ (particularly initially; I'd argue that in time one theater became sufficient for demand), but also Disneyland for overestimating the demand to such an extent that people wound up talking around the Bears as an operational burden and liability for their entire existence. If by the end they truly were able to operate the regular show in one theater and the Christmas show in the other as people have said in the past, that seemingly still speaks to the Bears never really pulling the numbers they were meant to, even after Splash Mountain came in and should have brought a more meaningful and lasting increase in traffic to the Bears.

 

[TP2000]

And at any rate, the argument could be made that *both* parks screwed up here: WDW for underestimating the drawing power of CBJ (particularly initially; I'd argue that in time one theater became sufficient for demand), but also Disneyland for overestimating the demand to such an extent that people wound up talking around the Bears as an operational burden and liability for their entire existence.

It was a huge draw at Disneyland at least into the early 1980's.

I know this because my grandmother on my mother's side, a very conservative and patrician woman who was a prominent philanthropic supporter of the Seattle Symphony and who never went downtown without gloves and a hat, used to turn into a completely different person when we went into that show in the 1970's. She hooted and clapped along, threw kisses at Teddy Beara, and my sister and I both swear she had a crush on Buff the stuffed buffalo on the wall.

And the show's were always packed back then.

Regardless, they boxed themselves in with that land island they built at WDW. They thought the upgrade Tiki Serenade show on the other side of the wall in Adventureland would be the bigger draw in '71, and the Bears show would be a lesser attraction. The exact opposite happened at WDW.

 

[britain]

It was a huge draw at Disneyland at least into the early 1980's.

I know this because my grandmother on my mother's side, a very conservative and patrician woman who was a prominent philanthropic supporter of the Seattle Symphony and who never went downtown without gloves and a hat, used to turn into a completely different person when we went into that show in the 1970's. She hooted and clapped along, threw kisses at Teddy Beara, and my sister and I both swear she had a crush on Buff the stuffed buffalo on the wall.

And the show's were always packed back then.

Regardless, they boxed themselves in with that land island they built at WDW. They thought the upgrade Tiki Serenade show on the other side of the wall in Adventureland would be the bigger draw in '71, and the Bears show would be a lesser attraction. The exact opposite happened at WDW.

I’ll second that. Not to mention the odd number of middle aged women (in the 1980’s) who always seemed to lose it when Liver Lips McGraw performed.

 

[PiratesMansion]

I'm not necessarily doubting those of you that were actually there, but basically everything you ever hear about the Bears was that it never really pulled its weight in California.

The low attendance numbers to the land was cited as a reason for building Splash. And they certainly didn't just put in the different versions of the show purely out of the goodness of their hearts.

So was it really just a precipitous decline in popularity in the mid/late eighties, or were the numbers fairly steady throughout the bulk of its run in spite of how people tend to talk about it performing at DL?

 

[TP2000]

View attachment 909392

Okay gang, here we go!

After striking out with an online records search for things like 1969-1971 copies of the Disneyland Line (which are available at the Anaheim Heritage Center, but you have to go there in person and I'm 500 miles away), and then checking the various and very excellent fan blogs out there for any sort of written documentation or circa 1970 interview from a Disney source, I was discouraged, but then thought maybe there's a way to find photographic evidence.

And I pieced together the following from several sources, and it shows the "show building" warehouse built for the Jamboree at Disneyland was constructed in a two-theater setup from the very beginning of construction in early calendar year 1971.

An important reminder: Magic Kingdom Park had its first soft opening day for guests on October 1, 1971. (It was very lightly attended with barely 10,000 people showing up). There were other lightly attended soft opening days over the next few weeks in October, '71. Magic Kingdom Park was officially opened to the public on October 25, 1971. Attendance remained light through mid November, but during the Thanksgiving weekend of 1971 the crowds finally arrived in huge numbers. The place was suddenly packed for Thanksgiving, and they were off and running...

Here is a photo of Disneyland's Bear Country construction taken in the Spring of 1971. The show building warehouse has been built beyond a new berm on the West side of the Disneyland Railroad tracks. There are two flylofts for the two Teddy Beara mechanisms, one over each theater, labeled as flyloft 1 and 2 in this photo. At the far northern end of the building's roof you can also see the roof access stairwell and door that allowed access to the roof, and the individual doors into each flyloft. The access stairwell and rooftop door is labeled A in this photo. As we remember, the entire Jamboree theater facility was accessed via a hillside portal that led down a long sloped hallway to the large lobby with two sets of theater doors. That entrance is noted here as TO LOBBY.

So that's what it looked like in Anaheim in the Spring of '71, and at least 7 or 8 months before the first real attendance and demand data began coming in for the show out in Florida during Thanksgiving and Christmas '71.

Here is an aerial photo of Bear Country taken during the Bicentennial summer of 1976. You can see the two flylofts, plus the access stairwell, easily in this photo. Apologies for the sizing, but good aerial photography is hard to come by from the 1970's.

When the show was closed in '01 and reopened as the Pooh ride in '03, they gutted the theaters but kept the basic structure. They even kept the flylofts, and the flyloft from Theater 2 is still used for the mechanism of the moving hot air balloon basket in the Heffalumps and Whoozles scene in the ride today.

Here is a Google Earth image from 2025, and I purposely screen shot it from the east to get the 3-D effect of those two Jamboree flylofts and the access stairwell that were designed into the building in 1970 and built in early 1971.

So for now, without finding written documentation from 1969-71 yet that the Jamboree at Disneyland was always planned for 2 theaters (which it obviously was), I think we can safely say that the notion they somehow rushed a second theater into construction and built it within four months of Thanksgiving weekend '71 in order to open at Disneyland on March 24th, 1972 is an old wives tale.

And with that task done, and after we finally hit 70 degrees today and there's definitely spring creeping into the air in St. George, I'm going to celebrate.

Oh, look at the time! It's almost 7 o'clock and the Friday Cocktail Hour is upon us! Happy Weekend!

I think I will now go carve up some sharp Tillamook cheese, add some smoked almonds to the plate, and then make myself a fresh and bracing Whiskey Sour. I'll put it in a fancy coupe glass, and then gladly do the following:

• Raise a toast to @MK-fan for posing this excellent question!
• Raise a toast to Miss Teddy Beara for being, well, Miss Teddy Beara regardless of which flyloft she was in!
• Raise a toast to increased ride capacity everywhere!

 

[DL-fan]

Thank you for your research TP, you can finally go clock out. It’s very interesting that you found out that the hot air balloon comes out of the same flyloft that Teddi Berra came out of, first time I’ve waver heard that.

Now I gotta find some other Disneyland cold cases you can look into.