UPDATE January 12 – Disney has recently given us an update on the upcoming reimagining of the classic “County Bears Musical Jamboree.” It has been announced that Grizzly Hall will close on Saturday January 27 and is set to reopen later this summer.
As the new show is set to pay homage to “Opry-style shows of Nashville”, the bears will sing reinterpreted Disney tunes in a range of genres of country music including rockabilly, bluegrass, pop-country and Americana. It will also include a classic tune which can be seen being recorded in the video below which was posted by Disney to YouTube.
We will keep you updated on further details regarding the reimagined “County Bears Musical Jamboree” as we head closer towards the opening this year.
September 15, 2023 – One of the most interesting announcements during Disney’s recent Destination D23 event was the revelation that the Magic Kingdom opening day attraction Country Bear Jamboree is set to be reimagined as the “County Bears Musical Jamboree.” This updated attraction will have a completely new story and soundtrack, with the Country Bears characters now set to reinterpret songs from classic Disney movies in different genres of country music during the show.
While this project has only just been officially announced, here’s everything we know so far about the plans to update this attraction in 2024.
This project has been in the works for some time
Former Imagineer Ethan Reed recently shared on Instagram that this project has actually been in the works for nearly two decades. Reed said he originally pitched the idea of a refreshed Country Bears show in 2004 and was working on actively developing it from 2018 through 2020 until it was officially put on hold due to the pandemic.
However, it looks like development has been quickly restarted, as Disney has confirmed that development on the reimagined version of this show will debut sometime in 2024, which is a pretty fast timeline for a Disney project.
Expect to see (mostly) familiar faces in this updated attraction
Country Bears fans will be happy to know that much of the original lineup of ursine characters will be a part of this new show, including Big Al, Trixie, Henry Dixon Taylor, and Terrence AKA Shaker. However, there will be at least one character refresh as well as it has been confirmed that Liver Lips McGrowl will be renamed to Romeo McGrowl in the new version of the attraction, which you can see in the character poster above. And of course there could be other new characters that debut as part of this reimagined attraction as well, we’ll just have to wait and see!
Work has already started behind the scenes on this updated attraction
Disney Imagineers are hard at work getting this new attraction ready behind the scenes and have working with Nashville musicians to get the authentic country sound. In a recently released YouTube video, you can see various musicians working on a country version of the “Bare Necessities” song from The Jungle Book, which will presumably be a part of the show.
Though no other songs have been confirmed for this updated show, it may be worth remembering that Disney did share a video of the Country Bears lip-syncing to “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” when Encanto was initially released, so perhaps that song will make it to the final playlist for the attraction as well.
Though we know that the attraction will open sometime next year, Disney has not announced when the current version of the show will play its last performance, so if you want to experience this classic Magic Kingdom attraction in its original form one last time, you’ll definitely want to do so in the near future as this new version will be making its debut soon!
