The Golden Horseshoe Review was a major attraction in Disneyland from 1955–1986. This fantasized version of an western-style saloon show tended to fill up for every performance each day. An abbreviated version of the show, The Golden Horseshoe Jamboree, occupied the same slot for another eight years after that and was also tremendously popular. Guidebooks to Disneyland from the time would recommend that, at rope drop, guests should run to the venue, The Golden Horseshoe Saloon, to make reservations if they wanted to see the show.
In 1994 the show closed to be replaced by the comedy string band act, Billy Hill and the Hillbillies who were also big crowd draws and stayed in that spot for twenty years. In spite of their popularity, they were slowly pushed out by Disney until, by 2014, they were gone and replaced by a series of, sporadically performing, smaller and smaller acts on the vintage saloon’s stage.
On May 3rd, 2024, the last act to grace The Golden Horseshoe’s stage — a series of solo piano players who’d been playing Disney songs and telling jokes for several years — was dropped from the schedule.
One of Walt Disney’s favorite attractions in Disneyland is now nothing more than a place you can buy chicken nuggets.
This seemed to be the first trickle of what has now become a flood of cancellations of live performances at the Disneyland Resort — a puzzling move as the parks move into what promises to be a busy summer season.
Let’s address the elephant in the room. Yes, costumed cast members who work as park walk-arounds or appear in parades recently voted to join the Actor’s Equity Union. Not only has this Union not even proposed a new contract yet, but none of the entertainment offerings that have been canceled in the last several months were part of those represented by that vote.
All theatrical performers, and this includes performers who do scripted shows in the streets, are represented by the American Guild of Variety Artists under whom they have been unionized for decades. While the AGVA does seem to have negotiated a pretty good contract late last year, Disney didn’t appear to fight it that much and has been hiring well-paid, union-represented, stage performers since then.
The Coalition of Resort Labor Unions is a group that unites most of the unionized staff at the Disneyland Resort and this vote will add a new group under their umbrella, but they were already such a formidable force that the extra 1700 people is worth noting but probably doesn’t change much as far as negotiating power. (If the CRLU went on strike, the Resort would be crippled with or without the new members.)
Without much blowback from the pulling of entertainment from the Golden Horseshoe, the company began to eliminate more. Club Pixar, the poorly attended nighttime dance party launched in conjunction with the current Pixar Fest celebrations at the Disneyland Resort was also eliminated, within the last few weeks. Disney explained that it was being canceled due to “guest feedback and operational considerations,” both of which may be true.
The feedback was pretty harsh on this event that people believed would be more like the much missed Mad T Party that had previously occupied the space, but it was more, in fact, like a Disney Junior-style interactive show for young kids.
The operational concerns might’ve been even more of a problem.
According to David Keonig (Micechat.com/Mouse Tales: A Behind-The-Ears Look at Disneyland) there are some significant structural issues with the stage that Club Pixar was on.
“Over the past weekend, visiting performing-arts groups that were supposed to appear on the Hollywood Backlot Stage at Disney California Adventure were forced to perform instead on the concrete below — due to safety concerns and a misaligned video wall.
The 25-year-old stage, unprotected from the elements, bears the scars of deterioration and neglect: warped wooden floors, nails protruding dangerously from backstage walls, and perilous soft spots taped off to prevent accidents.
Apparently, some of the metal supports underneath the stage fell out, since they were missing so many of the screws needed to hold them in place. As a quick fix to get performances back on the stage, the supports have since been pushed back into place.
However, dangerous conditions remain. According to one insider, “The lift jacks, meant to secure the stage, have repeatedly toppled over under the performers’ movements, threatening disaster with every show. Some are growing increasingly alarmed, fearing that the stage’s worsening condition is being ignored, risking the safety of every young performer who steps foot on it.”
The greatest worry is wood rot. When stepped on, numerous “dead spots” on the stage floor feel squishy, as if they could give way and someone could fall through.” — David Koenig, 7/11/24
“Operational considerations,” indeed.
Even though these seem like perfectly reasonable explanations for the removal of the show from DCA, it’s hard to jibe that with what happened next.
Hot on the heels of the Pixar excision, the final performance of Disney California Adventure’s Doctor Strange: Mysteries of the Mystic Arts was announced for June 30th, 2024. This closure is truly odd. Love or hate the show, its space was built for it, with its effects and lighting part of the structural surroundings. And it always filled up. This show gives the fairly sparse Avengers Campus some depth and is, arguably, the area that most gives a sense of being a thriving, lived-in, place to the land. It is also the best-designed part of the Campus with a richer, more intimate, feel — the look is based around the visual style of The Eternals movie as well — and without a focus to draw people there, Avengers Campus becomes dominated by its industrial warehouse looking main plaza.
Again, the Doctor Strange performers were already getting paid union-negotiated rates when the show opened. Ascribing this closure to anything other than budget cuts is difficult.
The final cuts reek of cold budgetary math.
Warriors of Wakanda: The Disciplines of the Dora Milaje, a powerful street performance where kids are trained by the intense and striking protectors of the homeland of the Black Panther is a life-affirming and engrossing piece of theater that I’ve watched many times. It is the heart of Avengers Campus and is being removed from Sundays and Mondays through the busiest month of the summer, July.
Citizens of Buena Vista Street are characters that wander DCA’s version of Main Street and bring it to life. I’ve argued for some time that Buena Vista Street at DCA is beginning out-Main Street Main Street at Disneyland. These wandering characters, which take an old Universal Studios gimmick and make it warmer and gentler, are a large part of that. They will not be performing on Thursdays and Fridays in July.
Early reports suggested that other entertainment such as Five and Dime, Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Dance Off! and The Amazing Spider-Man! were being canceled entirely, but most have since been added back to the July calendar, albeit with similar scheduling cuts.
It’s worth pointing out that none of these seem to be going away entirely, but are just being curtailed, right when the parks are the most crowded they will be all year.
While the cuts have been focused on Disney California Adventure, this may be because Disneyland has already had as many as it can take. While the return of Fantasmic last month was welcome, the sizeable Fantasyland Theater has been sitting almost entirely dark since January, nothing has been on the Tomorrowland Terrace stage since last summer, and even the Main Street USA ragtime piano player who used to play all the way up until the evening fireworks, stops at about 6:00 PM these days.
Some of these cuts may be motivated by more practical issues — poor audience response and a collapsing stage, for example — and none of them seem to be tied to the recent unionization vote, which leaves us with what looks like a straight percentage — about 20% — in live entertainment budget cuts sweeping across the California resort, which may be the only operational expenses that those parks have left to cut at this point.
Doing it just before the peak summer season leads the question, “Why is the Disneyland Resort so desperate to do this right now?”
Any thoughts? Please comment and let me know.
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times
