The Liberty Belle is a riverboat attraction in the Liberty Square of Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom.
Description[]
The riverboat is an attraction for guests to ride on and explore the interiors of. It is modelled after a steam paddlewheel riverboat and made to tie in with a 19th/early-20th century environment. It is inspired by the Mark Twain Riverboat of Disneyland and named for the Liberty Bell, a symbol of American independence of which a replica exists in Liberty Square where the riverboat makes its dock. As a reference to the original ride, the riverboat is narrated by a young Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), better known for his pseudonym of Mark Twain (itself an allusion to terminology used on riverboats). In history, Clemens was a riverboat-man in the late-1850s through early 1860s and the captain of the Liberty Belle is one Horace Ezra Bixby (1826-1912), the historic captain who Clemens served under.
The Attraction[]
The boat-ride takes you on a journey through the, Rivers of America from the docks of Liberty Square. First the boat passes by Frontierland where Clemens explains the story of the mining-boom from Big Thunder Mountain and of Chickapin Hilll. The boat goes on to pass by Tom Sawyer Island with Samuel reminiscing of his youth, claiming he used to be friends with Tom Sawyer (in real life, Sawyer was a fictional creation of Twain's). As the boats pass by Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Clemens explains how its inhabited by spirits angered by the mining and how the mountain got its name by the echoing sounds of the rains on the mountain sounding like thunder.
The boat goes on to pass a bend around Tom Sawyer Island and encounters a shack inhabited by a river-marker named Beacon Joe and after this, a tribe of Algonquin Powhatan peoples apparently going further west to find more lucrative food sources. The boats go on to pass by Cutthroat Corner where they narrowly dodge river pirates and after this, Fort Langhorne on Tom Sawyer Island. The boats go on the reenter Liberty Square through Howling Dog Bend where Sam tells guests of the ghost stories surrounding the old brick manor on the river-bend.
Haunted Mansion Connections[]
Part of the steamboat's tour involves passing by the Haunted Mansion in a locale called Howling Dog Bend. While passing by, Clemens would mention how locals say that the mansion is haunted, apparently due to having been constructed on an indigenous American burial-ground. For many years, the audio of the riverboat would play a clip of the Hellhound howling from the manor's grounds, a shorthand explanation behind where Howling Dog Bend got its name.
In the Ghost Gallery, a group of river-pirates go to a tavern with Little Leota who are possibly representations of the river-pirates of Cutthroat Corner and the Wilson's Cave Inn as seen from the Liberty Belle Riverboat on Tom Sawyer Island.
Trivia[]
- The character of Beacon Joe is taken from Pirates of the Caribbean, believed to be a replica brought over for imagineers to construct the attraction in Adventureland after the cancellation of the Western River Expedition which was intended to replace it in the Magic Kingdom. Sam Clemens' spiel mentions Joe coming from a bayou, an allusion to the Blue Bayou of New Orleans Square.
- Liberty Square previously had two riverboats known respectively as the Admiral Joe Fowler and the Richard F. Irvine.