The History of the Country Bear Jamboree

The Country Bear Jamboree audio-animatronic show has become a Disney fan favorite, however the story of the Country Bears begins far before Walt Disney World's version opened in 1971. And even though the show at Disneyland, Anaheim has long since been shut down, the Country Bears is still one of Disney's most iconic attractions.

The story of the Country Bears begins in the most unsuspecting of places, at the 1960 Winter Olympics which were to be held that year in Valley California. This was the first time the Winter Games had been held in the United States in nearly 30 years and the organizing committee felt the event needed the Disney touch. They reached out to Walt Disney hoping he would agree to take the lead on entertainment for all eleven days of the 8th annual Winter Games. Disney saw this as a great privilege and happily accepted the position as chairman of pageantry.

Walt was responsible for the opening and closing ceremonies, all decorations and evening entertainment and he even had a hand in providing security and ticketing. To say Disney went above and beyond for the event would be an understatement. As Walt and his team organized over 5,000 live entertainers, 2,000 pigeons for release, 75 film screenings, 32 snow statues that stood as high as 40 feet and a military salute of eight gunshots; one to represent each of the previous Winter Games. The spectacle did not go unnoticed with attendees feeling that Disney had set a new entertainment standard for future Olympic outings.

Walt spent his time at the event admiring the area's Alpine beauty and was struck with inspiration for a year-round family resort in a similar area that could serve to help his company diversify even further. Following the conclusion of the Winter Olympics on February 28th of 1960, Walt set out to find a suitable plot of land to achieve his newest goal. The search was not a short one and it wasn't until 1965 when Walt set his sights on the glacial Valley of Mineral King, in California's Sequoia National Park.

The area was ideal for the support of year-round outdoor recreation which made the site perfect for Walt's vision. By December, Disney had outbid other interested parties and they were granted a three-year permit to begin development on their newest resort with a proposed budget of $35 million. They were set to create a fully self-contained village and ski resort that could be used with no off season. However Walt was well aware his vision needed a touch of Disney magic to reach full potential and began working on ideas for evening entertainment in order to keep his guests engaged and on site even after the sun had set.

Walt was fixated on the idea of creating a show hosted by bears to fit in with the resort surroundings and assigned the project to legendary Imagineer Marc Davis, in collaboration with Disney animator Al Bertino. Davis created several bear group concepts including a one bear band, a bear marching band, a mariachi band featuring bears and even Dixieland bears.

In late 1966, Walt Disney stopped to visit with Marc Davis and check out the progress of the project now officially named, The Country Bear Band. According to Marc's wife, Alice Davis, "Walt had been ill and he came back to WED to see Marc and some of the others, and he walked to Marc's room and sat down. And a number of people came and Walt reached out with his hand and patted a couple of them on the tummy and said, 'I just want to see Marc for a while.' Marc said he looked terribly thin and drawn and wasn't too well at all. And so he asked Marc what he had been doing with the bears. So Marc got all the different bears out and said, 'when you had a lot of things to show Walt and Walt was enjoying it, it was like giving presents to little kids to open at Christmas'.

He said Walt started looking at the different bear bands and so forth and started laughing and Marc always felt that that was one of the last laughs that Walt had. And then Walt said, 'you know, I think I'd better get somebody to take me back to the the studio. I'm getting awfully tired.' And so they came to get Walt to take him back to the studio and he walked from Marc's door and Marc was standing in the doorway. When he walked up a short distance from Marc, he turned around and looked at Marc and he said 'goodbye Marc.' And then he turned around and left. Walt died shortly afterward. You know Marc said he knew that it was the last time he'd see Walt because Walt never said goodbye. He always said that 'I'll see you next week' or 'I'll check with you tomorrow on what you're doing'. He never said goodbye."

Despite the devastating loss of Walt Disney, plans for the Country Bears progressed and at this time the band featured an almost entirely different cast of characters than we now know. With a little lemonade bear, big Fred Olds II, cousin Ted and brother Zeb. Around the same time a brief demo was created featuring the current lineup of the country bears for the Mineral King Resort. Unfortunately while plans for the Country Bears were still progressing, plans for the ski resort crumbled. In 1969 an environmental organization known as Sierra Club, filed suit against the US government protesting the permits that Disney would require to build the resort. This put an indefinite halt on the Mineral Springs project. But the team of Imagineers working on the audio-animatronic show had no intentions of scrapping the Country Bears and decided that the soon to be opened Magic Kingdom in Orlando would be the perfect new home for the show. More specifically - Frontierland!

Imagineers worked night and day to finish the attraction in time for The Magic Kingdom's grand opening and hired Imagineer Xavier 'X' Atencio and musical director George Bruns to finalize the music that the bears would sing. As well as decide which bear would take the lead for each of the 15 very short songs written for the show.  As planned leading up to the opening day of the Magic Kingdom, Grizzly Hall a theater with a 350 person capacity was constructed in Frontierland to house the show.

Once the animatronics had been moved into the show building and programmed for the show, the Country Bears were ready to make their public debut. The Country Bear Jamboree was a huge hit on the Magic Kingdom's opening day October 1st 1971, with its 16-minute run time, giving guests the perfect opportunity to cool off while enjoying the wild antics of each of the country bears. Every one of the 18 bears were beloved by audiences with characters like Henry the show master and the accurately named Liver-Lips McGrowl quickly becoming fan favorites. The music of the show was so popular that an album was quickly pushed out which featured songs from the attraction so fans could bring the music of the bears they had come to love home with them.

The Country Bears were such a hit in Florida that plans were almost immediately set into motion to bring the bears over to Disneyland alongside a new area of the park  Bear Country. What was then known as the Indian Village, a section of Disneyland featuring Native American shows and attractions, was completely demolished to make way for Bear Country. The Country Bear Jamboree opened as the centerpiece of the newly themed land on March 4th of 1972, less than six months after the opening of the original Country Bear Jamboree.

Despite the waning popularity in Anaheim, the Country Bears managed to stick around until 2001 when the attraction was shut down to make space for another bear themed attraction: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The attractions closing was seen as quite the surprise as Disney was in the middle of producing a film based on the attraction. At that time of release that following year, under the title of the Country Bears, the film would open to some of the worst reviews of the year and would lose the studio upwards of $20 million dollars.

Despite the removal, the Country Bears live on in Disneyland in a number of ways. While riding The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh guests who are perceptive and quickly turn around following the Heffalump scene, can quickly spot the heads of Melvin, Buff and Max. The three original trophy heads from the Country Bears mounted up on the wall.

Another animatronic lives on in the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay of the Haunted Mansion. The animatronic Oogie Boogie is actually a reskinned version of Big Al, the biggest bear of them all.