Ernest Goes To Splash Mountain

Now I have said that in the past, Splash Mountain is my favorite theme park ride of any type. That is still very true. A while back one of the online video series, I watch known as Vaulting did a Ernest Month and there was a special opening featuring many different Ernest clips. One of which was that of Ernest riding Splash Mountain. Now I decided to look this up and I found that Disney actually produced a TV special titled Ernest Goes To Splash Mountain. I decided to watch it and now you will find out what I thought about it.



The Plot


For plot, see title.  Seriously the title of this special sums up the plot quite well but seems to be a recurring theme among Ernest franchise. So I can forgive it somewhat.  There actually is a little more to the plot than that as in this special, Ernest is the first person to ride Splash Mountain and he is training alongside his buddy Verne for this endeavor.  Now this special is treated in the style of a special news report but in reality the news characters aren't that important to the story, so I won't be talking about them in this review.


Main Character


I'm only going to be talking about Ernest since he was the most important character to this special. Really the only thing as important as Ernest was Splash Mountain.


Ernest played by Jim Varney

When I went into watching this special, I was afraid that too much of it would focus on Ernest and not Splash Mountian. I'm not going to say that Ernest upstaged Splash Mountian because the special was divided between time spent with Ernest and time learning about the ride. Even if all of the Ernest sequences could have been done as a montage.  Because really the entire time we see Ernest before he goes to Splash Mountian he is training to ride Splash Mountain.  It was a neat idea but I feel that the special dragged this concept out for far too long.   Though I will say that when Ernest finally did get on Splash Mountian, his reactions were pricless and I loved seeing him try to act all tough and as though he isn't scared. 

Attraction Coverage

Splash Mountain

Now as I said, most of the coverage was done in the style of a news special. That actually worked when delivering the facts and information about the ride. Admittedly, I knew majority of the facts that they were talking about because I have  read many books about Disney and have done some research on this ride in particular. Because I  like doing that. However, I will say that the information about the attraction was delivered in an entertaining fashion. Although they did use once cliche that I not only find annoying but it would be rather rude if you did it in the real world. You see when one of the news anchors was interviewing the man in charge of building Splash Mountain, she kept on cutting him off.  I just wanted to say, I don't care if this is just a special and your not a real reporter, that isn't funny. Seriously, I hate that cliche. Honestly,  if we did that in the real world people would be upset. Other than that, I didn't have too much of a problem with the delivery of the information.

My Final Thoughts

In the end, this isn't the worst Disney Parks special that I have seen but I can't say that I have ever watched a Disney Parks special that disappointed me. Though I think this one is the weakest and that is because it limits itself to just one ride and  as much I love Splash Mountain, there isn't enough there to sustain a truly entertaining special and let's be honest, I like Jim Varney but Ernest is a one note joke character.  Also quite honestly, the scenes of Ernest training and the scenes of the ride felt too disjointed. Now again not bad but probably the weakest Disney Parks special I have watched.