Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros
| Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros | |
|---|---|
| Park | EPCOT |
| Land / area | World Showcase |
| Type | Boat ride |
| Opened | April 6, 2007 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering
|
| Status | Operating |
Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros is a gentle boat ride inside the Mexico pavilion in World Showcase at EPCOT in Walt Disney World, Florida. Housed within the pavilion's pyramid, the ride sends guests in search of a missing Donald Duck, who has wandered off sightseeing on the evening he is due to perform a concert with his fellow Caballeros, José Carioca and Panchito Pistoles, the trio from the 1944 Disney film The Three Caballeros. It uses the flume and much of the scenery of the pavilion's original boat ride, El Rio del Tiempo, and on opening it became the first World Showcase attraction to feature established Disney characters.
History
The Mexico pavilion opened with EPCOT on October 1, 1982, and its boat ride, El Rio del Tiempo — the River of Time — opened with it. That original attraction had no Disney characters. Boats floated past the pavilion's restaurant and a volcano under a permanent evening sky, then continued through scenes presenting Mexican history and culture, from ancient civilisations and colonial life to a finale of fireworks over a modern Mexico City, accompanied throughout by a repeating musical theme. It operated in that form for more than twenty-four years.
Rumours of a character-based update circulated from the early 2000s, and on January 2, 2007, El Rio del Tiempo closed for refurbishment. The work was quick: the track, boats and basic layout were retained, while film screens, new animation and a new story were layered over the existing sets. The new animation of the three birds was directed by animator Eric Goldberg. The change was formally announced in February 2007, and Gran Fiesta Tour opened on April 6, 2007.
For its first eight years the finale's concert was presented as projected animation. That changed on December 4, 2015, when Audio-Animatronic figures of Donald, José and Panchito were installed on the finale stage. The figures were built for the Mickey Mouse Revue, an opening-day stage show at Magic Kingdom that closed in 1980, after which the show moved to Tokyo Disneyland, where it performed until 2009. The Caballeros figures were then returned to Florida and restored for their new role.
Experience
The queue and load area sit inside the pavilion's indoor plaza, styled as a Mexican town square at twilight, and posters along the way announce that the Three Caballeros are performing in concert that night. Boats first drift around the base of a Mayan pyramid, past the tables of the San Angel Inn Restaurante and a smoking volcano in the distance — a sequence inherited unchanged from El Rio del Tiempo.
Entering a tunnel in the side of the pyramid, guests meet Panchito and José on screen, in the middle of introducing their act. Donald, they realise, is missing. The rest of the ride alternates between the search and Donald's own tour. José and Panchito pursue him across Mexico on a flying serape, while Donald turns up in live-action footage of real Mexican locations, sightseeing, dancing and being distracted, with his friends repeatedly arriving just too late or pulling him away at the last moment.
Midway through, the boats pass a festival scene of small dancing figures, mariachi musicians and a Donald Duck piñata, staged in a style reminiscent of it's a small world. A cave-like section combines further film scenes with a mariachi band and a sequence in which Panchito and José finally drag Donald away from a group of dancers. The boats then emerge into a nighttime Mexico City, where fireworks burst overhead and the reunited Three Caballeros — since 2015, the Audio-Animatronic figures — perform their concert song to close the ride.