El Rio Del Tiempo

I read in another post that there was a refurb to this ride and I was just wondering when this happened and what are the differences?

It's now called the Gran Fiesta Tour. The new version opened in the Spring of 2007. It now contains several filmed screens of the Three Caballeros: Donald Duck, Panchito, and Jose Carioca.

I liked the original better, but I'm a Disney traditionalist

I like it but I hadn'r been on it in several years and forgot most of the other ride. Thought it was kinda funny they looking for Donald and he goofy off.

Well it sounds interesting. Not sure how I'm gonna like it, but I guess I'll see in a few weeks! Oh, are those dolls still in the ride, though? Or did they change everything?

There is still the "small world" scene in the ride.

The ride was so dated before the refurb that it would have been hard to produce something that wasn't better. While Gran Fiesta Tour is not the best of attractions, it is a welcome change from the original.

The basics are still the same, but Donald and his buds are dispursed throughout. The story is about two of them trying to find Donald as he goes through the country of Mexico. My small children love it and they didn't like it the other way. It was too dark. Personally, I liked the other and would have liked to keep the same theme with a little updating of the films.

I liked the other one better too, just because I think that one reflected Mexico better than the one there. Its more or less the same except that Donald, Jose and Panchito are in a lot of the different scenes. They're supposed to be doing one of their shows in Mexico. They didn't change too much except for the video footage and some of the other stuff in the ride, but its enough that the basic storyline is probably more about Donald and his friends doing their concert than it is really about Mexico.

Gran Fiesta Tour is a MAJOR improvement over the severely dated and extremely underattended El Rio del Tiempo. And it brought some new life into an attraction that they could've torn out or abandoned altogether.

El Rio was a nice little diversion and had a great song and all, but it was time for a change.

And El Rio never really reflected Mexico all that well. Overzealous merchants and pool bars, for example, are not, shall we say, uniquely Mexican and tended to make Mexicans look bad. And the ancient dances were never explained--they never explained what they were or why they were doing them.

The change reflects Mexico better than the old one, IMO. And it lavishes attention on one of Disney's lesser-known classic era animated features.

Considering history and context, the 3 Caballeros and Epcot's Mexico pavilion are a perfect match. Here's links to a couple of articles from Jeff Pepper's extraordinary 2719 Hyperion blog that explain things much better:

2719 HYPERION: Caballeros in the Age of Misinformation

2719 HYPERION: Taking the Gran Fiesta Tour

Thank you! I don't really know where to get all that other information.