Western River Expedition
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The Western River Expedition (WRE) is the name of a Disney attraction that was designed but never built. It was to be a western themed boat ride, slated to appear in the northwestern section of Frontierland at the Magic Kingdom, a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida USA.
Animator-Imagineer Marc Davis designed the attraction and characters in the form of drawings and models over a five-year period. Disney executives such as Dick Irvine and Roy Disney both liked the idea when presented with Davis' concepts.
The attraction was to have been located both inside, outside, and around an architectual feature in Frontierland known as Thunder Mesa mountain. After boarding a wooden launch, riders would have glided up a waterfall. The ride's narrator, Hoot Gibson (an audio-animatronic owl) would explain the ride's safety instructions. Potential scenes included:
- bank robbery
- an Indian (Native American) rain dance that causes it to rain
- Banditos
- prairie dogs, buffaloes
- Dry Gulch
- a cowboy on horseback on the roof of the town's saloon - 10+ characters, including a bartender (who is trying to shoot the cowboy and his mount off the roof), three saloon girls, and other cowboys hooting and hollering
- waterfall drop
If built, it would have been one of the most complex and expensive Disney attractions of its time, housed in one of the largest show buildings ever created by the Disney company (a show building being a large warehouse that stores the interior of the attraction). Its projected expense is one reason it was never built. The attraction, while in the show building that would serve architectually as Thunder Mesa mountain, would have also shared the show building with a "runaway" mine train themed rollercoaster. This rollercoaster would have housed features such as hiking trails atop the mesa, a Pueblo Indian village, and a pack mule attraction.
The Western River Expedition was to have been Walt Disney World's answer to Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean. When plans were being made for the Magic Kingdom, Imagineers had no plans to replicate "Pirates" for the Magic Kingdom. It was believed by many Imagineers at the time that Florida residents were too accustomed to pirates, as pirates are a part Florida's local legend and lore. Disney management thought that cowboys and Indians would be more surprising and exciting to Florida residents.
However, when the Magic Kingdom opened, the most common complaint from guests were "Where are the Pirates?" Disney hastily built a second Pirates of the Caribbean in the Magic Kingdom, thus scrapping plans for the Western River Expedition because much of the budget planned to build the Western River Expedition was used in building Pirates of the Carribean for the Magic Kingdom. Years later, there was the possibility that the Western River Expedition would be built, however various problems plagued the attractions development, and instead, over the course of many years, two complex attractions, each both using elements and inspiration from the Western River Expedition, now occupy the land originally placed aside for the Western River Expedition. Those two attractions are Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Splash Mountain.
Western River Expedition is something of a legend among Disney Imagineers, especially to those who admire the work of Disney legend Marc Davis. Every time Imagineers pitch the ride idea to Disney executives, it is vetoed. Imagineers have instead slipped parts of the ride into other attractions: Splash Mountain, World of Motion, Phantom Manor, and Living with the Land. Davis' concept drawings and model for the Western River Expedition have been filed away in the Imagineering Research Library.
