Re-Imagineering: Restoring Walt Disney’s Disneyland: The Golden Horseshoe Revue

Re-Imagineering: Restoring Walt Disney’s Disneyland: The Golden Horseshoe Revue:

Wally Boag, Betty Taylor and company made the show fresh for close to thirty years. During times of amazing political and social change and upheaval in the real world, the show continued to shoot from the hip. Despite the onset of several wars, civil rights, feminism, hippies, disco and rap, the girls of the Golden Horseshoe kept kicking their heels to the delight of the most diverse audiences… Into the 80′s, Pecos Bill was still spitting teeth, the girls were still posing for the Police Gazette and Sue was still looking for her Big City Beau. Audiences never seemed to tire of the show.Even though history had marched on, the old west remained the same — and so did the burlesque. It was, after all, supposed to represent another era. As spectators and participants, we learned about what that era may have been like. We didn’t look for our own social reflections and moog synthesizers in their frontier antics.But the coming of political correctness and entertainment expense cutbacks (as well as the retirement of the original cast) finally called a halt to the old time fun. Sadly, Frontierland has gone from boomtown to ghost town in the process. The Golden Horseshoe was the gold-digging, gunslinging heart of Walt’s old west. Now Frontierland more evokes Boot Hill.

Here’s one of the places where I think I disagree with Re-Imagineering.

For all of the flaws in the current Disney corporate environment (and the quality of the theme parks — and cost of entry — are just the starting point of the discussion of how the theme parks have been abused and neglected….), we have to remember that Disneyland is an amusement park, not a museum.

Times change. I was stunned the first time I walked into Adventureland and say Tarzan’s treehouse where the Swiss Family used to be — but let’s be honest. How many people under the age of 30 have HEARD of the movie, much less seen it? And let’s be honest. If you do try to watch it, won’t you admit it, ahem, hasn’t aged well? There are some things that are universal and forever — and then there’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People. And Swiss Family is a lot closer to Darby than Bambi, if you catch my drift.

And no offense to Betty Taylor (aka “Diamond Lil”), but — the Golden Horseshoe was Wally Boag. Growing up, and while I worked there, this was one of my favorite places in the park — it was fun, they somehow kept it fresh and interesting (I can’t say how many times I saw it — 75? 100? But I never saw it phoned in…) — but it was really about Boag. I saw half a dozen performances when he was off (as well as performances with the other understudies), and honestly, when Boag wasn’t there, it just wasn’t the same.

And even by the time I left the park (1980) it was clear it was winding down. It’s just as well they let it go. You could bring it back, but it won’t be the Golden Horseshoe Revue, it’ll be another Disney Entertainment performance. You might as well bring in Woody.

And — think about Swiss Family vs. Tarzan: those of us old pharts who know and appreciate the history of the park “get” this, but — what about the other 99% of the visitors? Isn’t a good show starring Woody more interesting and relevant (and able to draw larger crowds) in today’s world?

I don’t think I have a problem with this. It’s important for Disney and Imagineering to be sensitive to history and tradition — but not rigidly tied down by it. I’m not sure anyone really misses the Swiss Family Treehouse, and the Treehouse, the Revue, and the end of Abe Lincoln (well, the LATEST end of Abe Lincoln) were all, as I understand it, driven by one thing: dismal attendance. an attraction may be close to our hearts — but if the rest of the visitors don’t go to it, shouldn’t it be replaced by something else?

Capacity has always been a big issue for Disney — the days when a “full” park was 35,000 are long gone. That was a driving issue for replacing the Mine Trains with Big Thunder (oh, don’t get me started!).

dropping the Revue is a sin, but a minor one. It was expensive, it really depended on a couple of key performers to make it work, and perhaps the greatest sin at Disney: low capacity. The bigger sin is they haven’t really done anything better with the space, not that they stopped the show…

But then, Disney’s been doing that for decades….

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