As I’ve previously discussed, Disney uses music to manipulate your emotions. Still, the way that Disney incorporates music is novel. Think about your favorite animated classic, and you’ll notice that a song probably springs to mind. Disney wants theme park attractions to feel like three-dimensional movies, a byproduct of the way that company founder Walt Disney learned to tell stories. That’s why so many of your favorite rides come complete with soundtracks that are equal parts wonderful and impossible to get out of your head. Here are the eight attractions with the best musical accompaniments.
8. Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room
Just the thought of this attraction has likely put the word tiki in your head. You’re hearing it over and over again. You can’t make it stop. And I have bad news for you. It’s not going away anytime soon. Now you understand my pain in collating a list of the Disney attractions with the best musical accompaniments. It’s like an infinite loop of inescapable earworms.
And the earliest of Disney’s earworms, at least in terms of park usage, is this one. Interestingly, attaching music with lyrics to theme park rides was a bigger trend in the 1960s than during the early days of Disneyland. Most of the titles on this list were written during the same decade or so.
The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room isn’t the most memorable of them, but it is one of the three that are hardest to get out of your head. That’s because the song says the word Tiki 91 times…but oddly only once outside of the chorus. Anyway, the Enchanted Tiki Room is a classic piece of theme park history. Since the music is integral to the proceedings, it demands a spot on this list, no matter how lazy the lyrics of the main theme are.
7. Country Bear Jamboree
Sure, Country Bear Jamboree is Hee Haw with bears. And no, Hee Haw hasn’t been relevant at any point since the 1970s. Here’s the thing, though. Hee Haw aired for 23 years and continues to find new fans on home video and YouTube. People love that genteel sort of country music along with some corny comedy. Disney fans in particular eat it up, which explains why its longest running show is Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue.
Country Bear Jamboree is a frivolous, fun music show featuring fractured country and western tunes like All the Guys That Turn Me On Turn Me Down. What you might not realize is that most of the songs used during the show aren’t Disney originals. Instead, they’re bearish covers of either obscure or beloved classics from prior to the opening of Walt Disney World.
Image: Disney
In fact, I swear to you that Mama Don’t Whip Little Buford was a popular song by a country music duo named Homer and Jethro. Tears Will Be the Chaser for Your Wine is a Wanda Jackson hit from 1967. Disney haven’t to write a lot of new music for Country Bear Jamboree. They simply had to pick goofy stuff that already existed and then give it a hillbilly bear spin. While I readily admit that Country Bear Jamboree isn’t for everyone, there’s no debate on one point. The music is unforgettable, for better and for (much, much) worse.
6. Soarin’ Around the World
Out of the selections on this list, Soarin’ is the only one without lyrics. That speaks volumes about the gorgeous musical accompaniment for this trip around the world. Jerry Goldsmith scored the original version of the soundtrack, and he loved its usage on Soarin’ so much that he allegedly cried during his first ride.
In 2016, Disney introduced new versions of Soarin’ at several of its theme parks. They technically use a different soundtrack, but the new composer, Bruce Boughton, predicated much of his “new” work on the original Goldsmith melodies. The result is a modern version of what was already an instant classic.
Soarin’ Around the World’s tunes tether the rider to Soarin’s sensations of flying by creating a soothing, uplifting background for the proceedings onscreen. Soarin’s music is so recognizable that The Simpsons recently did a parody of it that bordered on pure homage. The credits of that episode, Bart’s New Friend, even include an extended take of recycled Soarin’ music. Nothing demonstrates the pop culture power of something like a Simpsons spoof.
5. Carousel of Progress
When Walt Disney planned the 1964 New York World’s Fair, he knew that he’d need a new ride design capable of hosting plenty of customers at once. He also knew that he wanted a song to anchor the experience as well as set the mood. It even had an additional purpose for the musical accompaniment. It would distract guests as the machinery moved them from one set to the next. And that song goes…
There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day.
Any diehard theme park tourist knows the song well. It more than distracts away from moving seats. It exemplifies the underlying theme of Carousel of Progress. There’s a Great, Big Beautiful Tomorrow celebrates change and embraces the future, a staple of Walt Disney’s personality. Even as Tomorrowland and Future World show signs of aging and lapsed updates, the song and stage show for Carousel of Progress maintain the signature optimism of Uncle Walt. This particular earworm is as closely associated with its ride as anything else on this list save for…well, you’ll know it when you read it.
4. Splash Mountain
One of the true oddities of The Happiest Place on Earth is that its silliest attraction has the most controversial subject matter. Song of the South has unfortunate racial overtones that make the movie the shame of the Disney library. The music that came from the movie, however, is jubilant and fun.
Disney Imagineers appreciated the joyous nature of the soundtrack and wanted to use it as the basis for an attraction. They envisioned a ride called Zip-a-Dee River Run that would incorporate several songs from the movie including its most famous one, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.
While the three attractions listed below have more iconic songs as their anchors, I would argue that Splash Mountain makes it up in volume with several adorable singalong tunes such as How Do You Do, Ev’rybody Has a Laughing Place, and Burrow’s Lament. Still, the crowd pleaser is the title track, so to speak. Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah is the celebratory reward that riders “earn” by reaching the bottom of Splash Mountain, usually in soggy clothing. It’s the actual, satisfactual ending to a wonderful ride.
3. Pirates of the Caribbean
In 1883, Robert Louis Stevenson fatefully wrote some lyrics to a fictional song mentioned in Treasure Island. One of the lyrics was Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum. What Stevenson couldn’t have imagined is that the vivid imagery of a drunken pirate would resonate with a Disney Imagineer roughly 80 years later.
That Imagineer, an illustrator with no prior experience as a lyricist, would forever alter the nature of sea shanties. His name was Xavier Atencio, and Walt Disney randomly picked him to start writing song lyrics for the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. It was almost as if Uncle Walt could see the future and knew that his employee would stumble upon a chorus that would stand the test of time.
By now, you know the song by heart. Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me) is more than just a set of catchy lyrics. It’s also the loose inspiration for the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise. The producers of the film even cheekily acknowledged this by giving Captain Jack Sparrow a famous quote that celebrates not just Atencio’s lyrics but also the original words of Stevenson. “Why is the rum always gone?” The answer is so that a pirate always wants for more.
2. Haunted Mansion
The ghosts, they are grim. The ghosts, they grin.
Such is the paradox of The Haunted Mansion as a theme park attraction. Is it supposed to be funny? Is it supposed to be scary? The answer to both questions is yes, as the Imagineers who developed the attraction had differing opinions about its core concept.
When tasked with writing the lyrics for this attraction, Atencio was on a hot streak after Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me). Emboldened by the success of that song, he became fearless in writing the lyrics for The Haunted Mansion’s theme song, Grim Grinning Ghosts. He understood that the ultimate appeal of the attraction was its marriage of the silly and scary. So, his lyrics reflect both sides of the debate.
One of the creatures is absolutely harmless. Consider this lyric: “silly spook may sit by your side shrouded in a daft disguise, they pretend to terrorize.” He only pretends. Others in the mansion aren’t so harmless. “Spooks arrive for the midnight spree, creepy creeps with eerie eyes, start to shriek and harmonize.” Atencio perfectly encapsulates the dichotomy of The Haunted Mansion through the lyrics of its theme song. I actually consider Grim Grinning Ghosts THE best Disney attraction song of all-time, but I can’t argue against the math that supports…
1. It’s a Small World
“I need ONE song that can be easily translated into many languages and be played as a round”
That’s the fateful quote from Walt Disney that has changed the lives of many people. Once he delivered this message to the Sherman Brothers, his musical wunderkinds, the siblings returned with an unforgettable piece of music. You literally cannot forget no matter how much you may want it gone out of your head.
It’s a Small World as an attraction is permanently married to It’s a Small World the song. It’s a simple, repetitive set of lyrics that aptly mirrors the Little Boat Ride that Walt Disney created for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Time Magazine has named it as THE most played song of all-time. That makes it an easy choice as the best musical accompaniment for any Disney theme park attraction to date.
