Garner Holt Productions has produced animatronics for attractions at nearly every Disney theme park around the globe - from Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster and Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage to Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure and Radiator Springs Racers.Ī contemporary to the 1967 Pirates of the Caribbean and a predecessor to the 1989 Splash Mountain, the Knott’s log ride had fallen into disrepair over the decades with animatronic characters no longer operating or replaced in some instances with department store mannequins.
The Disney-level quality of the rehabbed Knott’s ride should come as no surprise. And while Timber Mountain doesn’t contain any of the sweepingly expansive rooms found in those classic Disneyland rides, the rehabbed Knott’s ride does include several intimate scenes filled with detail, humor and visual storytelling. Standing in the shadow of Disneyland, the refurbished log flume will naturally draw comparisons to animatronics-filled attractions like Splash Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean. Legend has it that Hurlbut had to pitch his log flume idea three times to park founder Walter Knott before getting the green light to build and operate the ride. The team from San Bernardino-based Garner Holt Productions treated the rehabilitation project as a tribute to ride designer Wendell “Bud” Hurlbut, a theme park pioneer who essentially invented the flume-ride concept along with Arrow Dynamics. As with any great attraction, I found myself wanting to ride again and again to see if I could find something I hadn’t noticed before. I rode Timber Mountain several times over the weekend and found the animatronics and storytelling on the refurbished log flume to be nearly equal to anything found at Disneyland.
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