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The music has a very campy sixties quality to it that was certainly showing its age by 1980, although I don't think the music on its own would have been enough to put a bad taste in someone's mouth. Anyone who was riding the Okefenokee around that time and deemed it tacky, kitschy, and dated probably did so due to a combination of every aspect of the ride: Not only the campy music, but also the dopey 1960s character designs, bizarre tone, barely coherent plotline, and unimpressive animations. While the ride was impressive, novel, and modern in 1968, it was leaving a lot to be desired by 1980, especially with the toll taken by the animations over the years and the weird, misguided cosmetic overhaul of 1976 unintentionally making everything look a bit worse.

@@okefenokee_rabbit Thank you so much for your reply the next question is do you think they could bring the Okee back whether it be merch or make another building to house it in and do you think anyone would buy the merch or how would today's generation feel about it if they where to bring it back.

@@riverstreams42 Unfortunately I think there's no chance of the Okefenokee ever being revived. Many modern audiences are under the impression that the Br'er Rabbit stories - a centuries-old staple of African-American oral tradition - were either invented by the Walt Disney Company in bad taste or are otherwise a racist artifact of the Jim Crow era. For Six Flags to build an attraction that most would only perceive as a knock-off of Splash Mountain and Song of the South would certainly spark a negative reaction, and even if it were handled in a non-offensive manner like the original Okefenokee, the whole thing would probably be seen as a snide reaction to Disney's removal of Splash Mountain. I'm positive that it wouldn't go over well with general audiences; Anything having to do with Br'er Rabbit would probably just leave a bad taste in most people's mouths. Merchandise is another story, though. A handful of plush dolls of the Okee characters might be able to fly under the radar, especially if they're only sold for a limited period of time.

Okee68 How do you truly feel about the 1967 Gene Patrick version of the Okee and what would you and modern audiences feel about that version if it was around exactly like that today as well as the characters if it where unchanged and is the queue song from that first season or was it the Kroft's version with changed lyrics.

​@@riverstreams42 The 1967 ride doesn't appeal to me very much, personally. Of course we have no idea what the experience was truly like given the lack of documentation, but judging by what we've seen, I think it's fairly obvious why it only lasted for half a year. The animation was unimpressive and very limited, the character designs were fairly ugly in my opinion, and the tiny size of all the figures probably would have made the whole ride feel underwhelming. If the ride had not only remained unchanged from its 1967 incarnation, but also, in spite of all odds, lasted into the modern era, then I would probably regard it as a weird, quirky artifact from the 1960s that's worth keeping around and experiencing purely due to its historic nature but is something that I otherwise have little to no interest in. It would likely be somewhat famous for predating Splash Mountain by 22 years (assuming Splash Mountain is even conceived in this scenario at all), but again, with so many people being ignorant as to what the Br'er Rabbit stories actually are and what they represent, it might be unpopular and controversial among general parkgoers. However, now that I think about it, it's definitely worth noting that things might play out differently in Georgia than they would in California or even Florida, as Georgia's strong relation with the Br'er Rabbit folklore might render the average parkgoer more educated on the topic than people from elsewhere. It's hard to say, though. Also, to answer your final question, the queue song was indeed never changed from the 1967 version of the ride. There are even certain details pertaining to the 1967 ride that don't match up with the 1968 version, such as the elusive "Mr. Buzzard" in the spooky part of the swamp which became the storm scene, and Mr. Fox and Mr. Bear being captured at the end rather than chased away by bees.

There is, actually; It's called "The Darkive." **Invite link:** discord.gg/jzt3D2a It was originally meant exclusively for Okefenokee topics but has since been expanded to include general dark ride and theme park discussion. Years ago I pinned a comment with the invite link on one of my videos, but it seems to have been deleted.

@@okefenokee_rabbit Ok thanks

It did actually have a promotional filmed in exactly the same fashion as the one for the Spee-Lunker Cave, although I already have a silent, discolored version of it in my channel that you've likely already seen. If you look up "Six Flags Over Georgia 1967" on TH-cam, the version with color and sound should be one of the first results.

The show building, boat trough, and major structural elements are all still the same as they were in 1967.

1. The 1976 overhaul was already something of an attempt to mitigate some of the ride's issues, with the figures having been given tighter-fitting clothing that wasn't as easy to steal and more permanent fur that wasn't so susceptible to deterioration. If for whatever reason they had really been committed to improving the ride, they could have at least kept the lighting in good shape, or maybe they could have even done something big like completely redesigning all of the figures, but ultimately the Okefenokee was just too much of a liability to keep running, especially when replacing it with something much more impressive was very clearly the move at the time. 2. With the exception of the two frogs that I have a video of on my channel, I'm sure all of them ended up in a landfill at some point or another. There's no evidence of anything else having survived into the present. Tim Hollis once told me that there was supposedly a single rabbit without its fur being kept in park storage until some time in the nineties, at which point it was probably thrown out. There's a slim chance that it could still be around, but I doubt it personally. 3. I doubt any of the production moulds were preserved. There wouldn't have been much of a reason to save them considering that they held no historical value at the time, and it's been so many decades since they were in use that even if some of them had been saved initially, it's not very likely that any would remain today.

Unfortunately there's no available information on this footage; no filmmaker names or anything of that sort.

@@okefenokee_rabbit Kind of a shame that we dont know much on the only footage of the okee, we still gotta wait untill some ride through from the 1967 season (prob from a promo video) shows up.

A fully recorded ridethrough with sound, either from the very late seventies or 1980, would be absolutely unreal. There's a full sound recording of The Enchanted Voyage at Kings Island from 1980, so it's not unfeasible for somebody to have done the same for the Okefenokee at roughly that time.

The fact that Tim Hollis captured four different audio recordings of the ride and managed to obtain copies of almost every single one of the ride's source reels by asking exactly the right person was nothing short of a one-in-a-million scenario. That's not even to mention the massive treasure trove of professionally recorded film that miraculously showed up on a stock footage website mere months after I uploaded this video.

I would say they have equal levels of charm, personally.

-b’rer rabbit’s rap party-

I think the 1967 iteration of the opening scene was more or less the same thing as the 1968 version; just a simple vignette showing Mr. Rabbit living his good life before any conflict arises. The first verse of the queue song seems to suggest this, and it especially makes sense when you consider that the Krofft brothers were mostly just taking the existing scenes of the 1967 ride and making them more interesting. I can't say whether or not the original opening scene featured some version of the crow quartet, however. Its entirely possible, but we'll probably never know.

It's not, although I can see how some of the audio in the marsh might sound a bit similar.

To my knowledge, all of the audio tracks here (except for the crows' second song) are digitized versions of direct copies of the original, untrimmed master reels. While I didn't include this in the video, each audio file, as sent to me by Tim Hollis, still had a brief reading of the reel's title by Marty Krofft at the beginning such that copies could be properly identified before being fed into the ride. I don't know what the reasons for all the little imperfections are, however.

1. I don't remember if it was Sid or Marty who once made a post on Instagram featuring some footage of the Okefenokee and saying something to the effect of, "I can't believe Six Flags continued to let us work for them after we made this." Whoever it was, I would imagine that neither Krofft felt any ire upon learning that some of their cruder work from many years prior had been replaced by something that most would agree is demonstrably better. 2. Tim Hollis claims that the Horror Cave closed in 1985, and I'm inclined to take his word on that. 3. The reason there's infinitely more footage of Monster than there is of the Okefenokee is simply because of the technological limitations of the 1960s and 1970s. Digital means of capturing footage didn't exist back then, and because people only had so much physical film to spare, they only recorded things that were particularly valuable. If someone were filming anything at SFOG in the 1970s, it was almost always just shots of family and friends. The thought of capturing footage inside of a dark ride, which wasn't guaranteed to show up well on camera due its dim lighting and certainly wouldn't provide very good angles of people's faces, wasn't something that crossed most people's minds. Furthermore, because there was no internet back then, nobody had a means of sharing their footage with a mass audience. So even if there was a sizable number of people who actually did record bits and pieces of the Okefenokee, then the unfortunate reality would be that most of those films were forgotten about many decades ago and have been collecting dust in various attics and basements for the past 45 years, never to see the light of day. With all that said, I'm fairly certain that Monster Plantation is in fact more popular now than the Okefenokee was during its time. Compared to the Okefenokee, Monster was made under much higher production values, has a much more coherent narrative, is maintained better, and additionally has the status of being a very old, classic attraction that serves as something of a relic from a bygone era of the park. The Okefenokee, on the other hand, was novel during the first few years of the park's operation but soon started to become passé, unremarkable, and even somewhat unsightly due to its persistent maintenance issues. I might be wrong on this, but I don't think too many people were particularly attached to the Okefenokee by the time it closed. It was never quite the iconic, fan-favorite staple that Monster is.

Also I got some more questions to ask you. 4. Does Mr. Fox in the kidnapping scene blinks his eye since I found one of your image in jumpshare showing people smiling on the boat and at the back are the carrots and Mr. Fox opened his eyes which he never opened his eyes in this footage 5. Are the sets in the arsenal cave bassicly just cardboards? 6. Does the monster plantation/mansion have a bigger show building than the okefenokee since I compared the okefenokee's show building to monster's and okefenokee's show building looks much smaller than monster's show building 7. Did the magic bunny replaced the hula hooping bunny in 1972? 8. What characters in the okefenokee survived the demolition in 1980 or recycled in monster plantation/mansion?

​@@SammyTheCitipati 4. None of the figures had a blinking animation save for a single owl in the opening scene. Mr. Fox in the kidnapping vignette had closed eyes originally, and they were replaced with open eyes likely in 1974 or 1975, hence what you see in that photograph. 5. The mounds of cannonballs in the arsenal were constructed of plywood and coated in ultraviolet paint that glowed in the dark. The scene was very similar to the 1950s-era Disneyland dark rides in that regard. 6. Monster Plantation uses the exact same show building as the Okefenokee; it's not any bigger. The boat trough and the lift hill mechanism, among other things, are still exactly the same as they were in 1967. 7. Yes, the magic rabbit replaced the hula-hooping rabbit in either 1971 or 1972. 8. None of the animated figures were recycled for Monster, but a handful of frogs survived, and you can find a video of them on my channel. There's also supposedly a former SFOG employee who has a handful of animated figures in storage (including a Mr. Fox), though this remains an unsubstantiated claim with no proof to back it up.

​@@okefenokee_rabbit I have 1 more questions to ask you 9. Did the characters in the okefenokee got redesigned by 1975 or 1976?

@@SammyTheCitipati I don't know, actually. I've always just assumed the cosmetic overhaul was done in 1976 simply because I've never seen a photo of it dated prior to that year. It's definitely possible that it was as early as 1975, however.

This is the first I've heard of any additional footage of the crows, although I'm not able to find it anywhere. Can you send a link to it?

@@okefenokee_rabbit 4:19 in the below video has a clip of crows but I’m not sure whether it’s tied to the audio from this video or if it’s a different scene th-cam.com/video/yFx_juFPZGo/w-d-xo.htmlsi=sUZ2OmNH0h9yuCtP

@@basilstorm9461 That's just an alternate scan of the footage we already had, so it's nothing new, unfortunately.

When you consider not only the fact that we have the uncompromised source recordings of virtually every audio reel from the ride, but also the massive wealth of professionally filmed footage and Tim's own audio recordings, it's fairly safe to say that the timeline we ended up with is one in a million as far as the documentation of this obscure 1960s Six Flags attraction is concerned.

Very uneventful regarding the Okefenokee, although I haven't actively been searching for anything new in quite some time. I believe the Okefenokee has pretty much run its course online, although something major coming up isn't outside the realm of possibility.

The final few seconds are missing, unfortunately, but it you consult the live 1972 audio recordings on Jumpshare (accessible via this video's description), you can actually hear the song looping at the very end of the last recording. And don't worry about "bothering" me with questions; I'm always glad to answer them.

⁠​⁠@@okefenokee_rabbit Thanks for the information! (Wish I had seen it sooner haha) I’ll check out the live recording and see if I could possibly try to mix it in, curious to see if there’s another part to the song. Pretty lucky there even is a live recording to compare it to.

@@Splasher89 You would have to remake that part from scratch, unfortunately. It's so muffled that it's almost impossible to make out what it's truly meant to sound like.

I apologize for not seeing your comment until now, but I'll do my best to give educated answers to all of your questions. A lot of this stuff is so specific, however, that you would be better off finding an actual former ride employee to ask about it. 1. The fire has never been attributed to an exact date as far as I'm aware. The Okefenokee closed in September 1980, and I don't think the fire could have happened more than just a few months prior to that, so if I had to guess I would say it was some time around June. 2. The Okefenokee figures were incredibly basic, so there likely wasn't much to see under their fur and feathers. If the Spee-Lunkers of Six Flags Over Texas are anything to go by, the Okee figures likely had fiberglass "shells" giving form to most of their body, flexible wire or hose structures for posable parts (such as the rabbits' ears and maybe certain characters' arms), and then all of the mechanical and pneumatic structures underneath those. The figures' faces certainly weren't built into their internal features, save for snouts like on Mr. Fox and Mr. Bear, which were most likely extensions of their fiberglass head molds. Eyes and whatnot were merely cosmetic features applied to the figures' exteriors. I'm not sure how fur was applied, though. 3. The figures remained structurally the same throughout the entire Krofft period from 1968 to 1980; None were ever given new internals. 4. I'm not quite sure how many types of fabric were used over the years, but it seems to me like there were only two: one prior to 1976 and one thereafter. The consistent deterioration of the fur before 1976 tells me that they were simply using the same fabric over and over again at first. Then, from 1976 onward, the characters' fur doesn't appear to have changed any, which leads me to believe that a single, less deteriorative alternative had been found. 5. It's possible that ride operation continued while some of the more minor figures were out for repairs, but I'm sure the ride had to be closed if any of the Mr. Rabbits, Mizz Rabbits, Foxes, or Bears weren't present. 6. I'm not sure if any the speakers ever quit working at any point. It's a possibility due to the humidity, but I really couldn't tell you. 7. The figures seem to have been pretty well made, so I can't imagine anything major like an entire ear falling off a rabbit. I don't think there was really any damage done to the figures other than the deterioration of fur and the theft of clothes. 8. The Okefenokee's popularity was in steady decline throughout the entire period from 1973 until its closure, when the already somewhat obscure dark ride was being increasingly overshadowed by big, high-profile thrill rides. I don't think Six Flags would have actually advertised the 1976 overhaul, nor did the average parkgoer know of the 1980 fire, so I doubt either of those things had any significant effect on the Okee's popularity. However, it _might_ have seen a slight spike toward the very end just from people who wanted to ride it one last time before it closed. 9. It's more than likely, although the overhaul did give nearly all of the characters much tighter-fitting clothes that were probably a lot more difficult to grab off. 10. The Krofft brothers were never directly responsible for the music in any of their productions to my knowledge, so I would assume the Okee music was entirely the work of other people. 11. Most of the fabric damage was likely in the form of mildew accumulation. 12. I don't think the fire was quite the "nail in the coffin" that it's made out to be. Even before the fire, the Okefenokee was already a dated, unpopular, troublesome burden on the park, and the decision to replace it had surely been made some time in the late 1970s, with the conceptual/preliminary work on Monster Plantation likely bordering on completion by the time the fire happened. The plans were already in place, and the Okefenokee definitely would have closed in 1980 regardless of the fire.

Only the Okefenokee's exterior facade and queue structures were demolished; The building itself was reused. The actual structural components of the building are still the same as they were in 1967, with the boat trough, concrete walls, lift hill, and everything else all still intact. The reason the old lattice-walled queue house was demolished is because it would have somewhat obscured Monster Plantation's big antebellum mansion facade, which is important for parkgoers to see clearly as they pass by due to it being integral to the ride's theming.

There was oddly never a Mr. Fox costume, although I would never be able to tell you why that was. I would imagine there was some degree of training for the costumed characters given that the original trio of Six Flags parks, in their early years, emphasized acting and highly pervasive theming. However, I don't actually have any idea of what was going on behind the scenes as far as the park's costumed characters are concerned.

I'm glad you've enjoyed my content, bruv. Always great to hear of people actually taking an interest in this obscure dark ride from the 1960s and keeping it alive in the collective consciousness.