Frontierland® Area

Every young boy’s dream of the Old West is here in Frontierland®, a regular Wild West settlement (or a movie version of one), complete with a saloon, trading post, general store, and hotel with plenty of hitching posts out front for the horses. “Home on the Range” plays while cast members, decked out in ten-gallon hats and jingling spurs, walk the planked decking, and often have a shoot-out or two. There’s even a border town area with plenty of cactus, mesquite, and adobe buildings topped with red-tiled roofs. When you’re tired of the frontier, take a raft over to Tom Sawyer Island for a bit of relaxation, or sit yourself down for a quick game of checkers.

  • BIg Thunder Mountain Railroad® Attraction

    BIg Thunder Mountain Railroad® Attraction
    A peek at the mining country of the Old West.

  • The buildings of Frontierland

    The buildings of Frontierland

  • Tom Sawyer Island

    Tom Sawyer Island
    A playground inspired by the famous books of Mark Twain.

  • It's Splash Mountain time!

    It's Splash Mountain time!

  • Splash Mountain

    Splash Mountain

  • Spash Mountain

    Spash Mountain

  • Splash Mountain®

    Splash Mountain®

  • Splash Mountain Laughing Place

    Splash Mountain Laughing Place

  • Pecos Bill Cafe Tall Tale Inn & Cafe

    Pecos Bill Cafe Tall Tale Inn & Cafe

  • Liberty Belle and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

    Liberty Belle and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

  • Diamond Horseshoe

    Diamond Horseshoe

  • Keep an eye out for the Country Bears!

    Keep an eye out for the Country Bears!

  • Have an adventure on Tom Sawyer Island

    Have an adventure on Tom Sawyer Island

  • Tom Sawyer Island's Fort Langhorn - the kids will love it!

    Tom Sawyer Island's Fort Langhorn - the kids will love it!

  • Fun times in the fort

    Fun times in the fort


= Cara's Favorite

BIg Thunder Mountain Railroad® Attraction

Inside Frontierland’s 200-foot rocky outcropping resembling the scenery in Monument Valley is a zippy coaster ride offering visitors a peek at the mining country of the Old West. Disney rounded up a fantastic assortment of old mining equipment to give a taste of the gold rush to this blast of an attraction. A new interactive queue passes through the mining company’s offices, into the explosives room packed with sticks of dynamite, through the foreman’s office for a look down into the mine, and then a test of the ventilation system with an “auto canary” for safety purposes.

Finally, you’ll board a fifteen-car “runaway” mining train led by a puffing and chugging engine for a wild journey through creepy bat caves, steaming geysers, bubbling mud pots, hazardous rockslides, rumbling earthquakes, and collapsing mine shafts. The details whip by so quickly you’ll have difficulty absorbing them all. For those who like speed but not big drops, this is your coaster; there are plenty of curves and small dips, but all in all you’ll find it fairly tame and loads of rip roarin’ fun.

4-minute ride. Minimum height: 40 inches. Not recommended for expectant mothers or those with back or neck problems. Children under the age of seven must be accompanied by an adult.

Country Bear Jamboree Show

Splash Mountain® Attraction

This is one ride guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Who can resist the charms of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Bear, and the rest of the gang, even if it culminates in one heck of a plunge? Board a hollowed-out log to float through audio-animatronic scenes from Disney’s classic film Song of the South, splashing and dropping through Brer Rabbit’s Laughin’ Place. Drift ‘round the briar patch while toe-tapping music plays among the cabbages and carrots, jugs of moonshine, chirpin’ birds, and croakin’ frogs as you relax and bob your head to the beat.

Inside the mountain, Brer Fox and Brer Bear cause plenty of commotion along the way as Brer Rabbit outwits them at every turn. As you float through bayous, marshes, and caverns, all a delight to the eye with loads of colorful detail and too-cute cavorting characters, the addictive theme song Time to Be Moving Along plays. As the ride creeps upward, heed the doomsday warning of a gloomy pair of buzzards (“It’s turning back time” and “We’ll show you a laughing place”) just before the final doozy of a splashdown over a 5-story waterfall and into an oversized briar patch. It’s pretty tough to keep your eyes open (at least for first-timers) but try to grab at least a peek of the park from the top. And don’t think you missed the cherished Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Da tune; you’ll hear it on the way out.

11-minute ride. Minimum height: 40 inches. Not recommended for expectant mothers or those with back or neck problems.

Cara’s Tip: The drop’s not as bad as it looks, so don’t let it keep you from experiencing one of the best rides Disney has to offer.

Tom Sawyer Island

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