Disney will be making some changes to its Jungle Cruise ride following years of complaints that some of the attraction’s features were racially insensitive.
The ride, located at both the Disneyland location in California and Disney World location in Florida, will be getting a face-lift, the company announced in a blog post on Monday.
“As Imagineers, it is our responsibility to ensure experiences we create and stories we share reflect the voices and perspectives of the world around us,” Carmen Smith, creative development and inclusion strategies executive for Walt Disney Imagineering, said in a statement.
The ride has long been criticized for its depictions of native people. In one scene, an indigenous character named “Trader Sam” is holding skulls out on a string. The ride’s skipper, who steers the boat around the attraction, says Sam will trade “two of his heads for one of yours.”
One scene in the ride shows several people who are holding on to a tree in order to escape the horn of a rhinoceros. In its Disneyland iteration, the character at the top is white, while the rest behind him are people of color. A newly imagined mock-up of the scene appears to show members of a previous boat tour that went awry.
“Imagineers are addressing negative depictions of native people while adding a humorous storyline that follows the adventure of a Jungle Cruise skipper, his passengers and what has become of their boat and its contents,” the company said in a statement to USA Today. “Guests will also find this group of adventurers to be diverse — in background and fields of interest.”
The Los Angeles Times reports that the update to the ride will not be based on the upcoming Jungle Cruise movie with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt.
In June, Disney announced changes to the theme of the ride Splash Mountain, which in the future will be based on the adventures of Princess Tiana from the movie The Princess and the Frog instead of Song of the South, a 1946 film that critics say was filled with racist stereotypes and Old South tropes.
