Photo: BRYAN R. SMITH/Getty Images
Disney fans missed no opportunity to get some bucks after the closure of Splash Mountain, at Walt Disney World Park, from which they started selling bottles with alleged water from the attraction.
In some cases, 10-ounce bottles of water, purportedly from the Splash Mountain game, were being sold on e-commerce platforms. up to $149 dollars.
But they weren’t the only ads, as fans of this controversial game could also buy plastic bags filled with Splash Mountain water for $8.50 to $25.
Splash Mountain was one of the most popular attractions at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and stayed that way for 30 years; however, the company decided to put an end to this story, since the game had a racist background.
Disney decided to close the famous log ride on January 22, and so some of the amusement park fans decided to start selling these strange souvenirs of the controversial attraction.
The makeshift sellers took advantage of the digital marketplace on platforms such as eBay by claiming that their products contained a few ounces of the 950,000 gallons needed to run Splash Mountain.
An attraction with a controversial past
Disney began a process to review the racist backstory that went into the design of the famous Splash Mountain, according to a report from The New York Times.
The attraction was designed based on the musical movie “Song of the South”produced in 1946which was also banned from the Disney movie catalog for more than 35 years.
The closure of the attraction was announced by Disney in 2020, following the national debate on racism in the United States that sparked the murder of George Floyd.
The film “Song of the South” was set on a Georgia plantation in the years after the civil war, mixing live action cinema with animation, which was very attractive for its time.
The movie even won an Academy Oscar for the song “Zip-a-Dee -Coso”; however, the film has been criticized, since the plot idealizes slavery and promotes racist stereotypes.
Disney CEO Bob Iger announced in 2020 that the film would not be part of the Disney+ catalog, as “It just wasn’t appropriate for the time.”.
Splash Mountain will be no more; however, the amusement park has begun a redevelopment of the attraction, and when it reopens in 2024, fans will find it under a new name Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, which will be represented by Disney’s black princess, Tiana.
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