Long before Disneyland's Splash Mountain was reimagined as Tiana's Bayou Adventure, one of the Imagineers involved in its creation had serious reservations about its theme. Kathy Mangum, a former Walt Disney Imagineer with 42 years at the company, recently reflected on her work on the attraction, stating that building it with a backstory based on the 1940s Disney movie “Song of the South” was a “horrible idea.”
Mangum shared her thoughts on the Dream Chasing podcast, hosted by former Imagineering President Bob Weis, where she discussed her career, including projects like Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage and Cars Land at Disney California Adventure. She explicitly stated, “I knew building Splash Mountain based on a movie we would not show was not a great idea.”
The Splash Mountain log flume debuted at Disneyland in Anaheim in 1989. Its narrative drew from “Song of the South,” a live-action/animated musical that Disney had shelved in the 1980s due to its perpetuation of racist stereotypes. The 1946 film itself was based on Joel Chandler Harris’s 1880s “Uncle Remus” stories, which depicted life in the Southern plantation era.
While Mangum had reservations, Disney Legend Tony Baxter is credited with conceiving the idea for Splash Mountain in 1983. He reportedly came up with the concept while stuck in traffic on the I-5 Freeway, envisioning a way to repurpose audio-animatronic figures from Disneyland’s America Sings attraction. In a 2023 interview on Zeitgeist’s Spirit of the Time video podcast, Baxter defended his choice of theme. “There was nothing in the ride that in any way was detrimental to anybody,” Baxter said on the podcast, adding, “Whatever the controversy is that has come up with it is more related to what the film is. And I think we’re way overboard on that kind of sensitivity.”
Mangum, however, maintained her early concerns. Despite her misgivings in the 1980s, she worked on the project anyway, a decision she now regrets. “I’m not proud of that,” Mangum stated on the podcast. “I wouldn’t do it today. Neither would Disney, but we did it.” She recalled the voice actor recording sessions for the attraction's Brer Fox animatronic figures as the “lowest point” of the project, finding the experience “uncomfortable.”
Clones of Splash Mountain were later built at the Magic Kingdom in Florida and Tokyo Disneyland in Japan, both debuting in 1992.
The decision to remove the “Song of the South” theme from the Splash Mountain rides in Anaheim and Orlando was made by Disney during the park closures related to COVID-19 and amid widespread social justice protests across the United States following the 2020 death of George Floyd. Both attractions closed in 2023 and have since been transformed into Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, based on the 2009 film “The Princess and the Frog.” That movie was notably celebrated as Disney’s first animated depiction of an African-American princess and received Academy Award nominations for best animated feature and two original songs.
Mangum expressed her approval of the change, stating that the transformation was “the right thing.”
Mangum, who grew up in Orange and began her Disney career with a part-time job at Disneyland while studying at Cal State Fullerton, retired from Imagineering in 2018. During her tenure, she also contributed to other significant projects, including Radiator Springs Racers and Luigi’s Flying Tires in Cars Land, Toy Story Land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and the Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach water parks at Walt Disney World.
