Animated Concept Art from Western River Expedition: Saloon Singer

Western River Expedition at Walt Disney World was planned to be a kind of sequel to the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. The building designed to house WRE was named Thunder Mesa, and themed to look like rocky cliffs and bluffs. Along with WRE, Thunder Mesa was reportedly going to be home to three other attractions - a runaway mine train ride (that idea would eventually become Big Thunder Mountain Railroad), and hiking and pack mule trails winding up the side of cliffs.

Thunder Mesa Art

To ride the Western River Expedition park guests would enter inside Thunder Mesa thru a cave-like passage, and board small boats much like Pirates of the Caribbean at the Disney parks. Part of the journey would take them through a western town called Dry Gulch. It's here the guests would witness all types of rowdy cowboy activity. Like a lively scene from the front porch of a saloon...

"Saloon Singer" by Marc Davis

... so now here's this concept art animated to look like audio-animatronics with simulated show lighting...



Closing Comments...

Long time Disney composer Buddy Baker (he did the music for the Haunted Mansion) was supposedly going to write the music for WRE. To the best of my knowledge no WRE music was ever recorded. So for my animation the saloon singer is Tammy Grimes from a 1963 episode of the TV western The Virginian entitled "The Exiles." Here's Tammy's performance if you wish to check it out...



I learned it's really hard to animate a piano player. If I was in charge of programming an animatronic piano man I'd be asking (more like begging) that we use some sort of motion capture to do the job.

Lastly if you want to learn more about Western River Expedition please visit Widen Your World. This was the first place on the internet to seriously document the history of WRE.