WATCH: Keel Boat Skippers Recreate Trackless Disneyland Ride

ANAHEIM, CA — Stand on up and watch your head — it's time to hop on the virtual Mike Fink Keel Boats with a former crew of riverboat operators. A "refloat" of the former Disneyland ride debuted this week, thanks to a handful of hilarious former cast members.

The Keel Boats were a C-ticket Frontierland attraction at Disneyland, based on a television episode, "Davy Crockett's KeelBoat Race."

Mike Fink's Keel Boats first opened at Disneyland on Dec. 25, 1955, with boats named the Gullywhumper and the Bertha Mae. Disneyland Resort is enduring its most prolonged shutdown in history amid the coronavirus pandemic. Skippers of the Jungle Cruise and fans of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride have produced renditions of the attractions for fans as a way of connecting with the guests. These former Keel Boat captains were not to be outdone, and took us on an 11-minute tour of Rivers of America, as recreated in their backyards.

The Mike Fink Keel Boat skippers were as witty a crew as you'd find on the Jungle Cruise, where puns and bad jokes abounded. Over 25 years later, these captains still recall their favorite spiels, as shared in their YouTube video.

Passengers of the Keel Boats never knew what they would experience when stepping aboard. From rough landings and awkward shove-offs to a sunken vessel (that will remain unspoken here), the "trackless" ride took its final journey around the Rivers of America in 1997.

Though their attraction is no longer running, the men and women who ran the Keel Boats from 1985 to 1995 have never forgotten their experiences, as Bryan Carlson told Patch. The group gets together biannually, reconnects over Facebook and keeps in touch through small reunions of the Westside Attractions groups when not in coronavirus shutdown. Each one agrees that working on the attraction and at Disneyland Resort shaped their lives and their interaction with others.

Carlson, James Wilson, Ron Voss, Jeff Perkins, and Davey Brown worked with fellow Disney fans Matt and Suzy Clay-Hartman, who produced the short film based on clips each took from their own backyards.

In looking at the Mike Fink Keel Boats, "No other attraction gave you that close interaction with guests," Carlson told Patch. "It was a real challenge to deliver the long spiel while throttling and steering a free-floating boat that had the last right of way on the entire river."

It took Carlson three days to master the craft and qualify for driving the boat, he reminisced. The event made him grateful that he stuck with it.

Brown recalled incidents on the boat, from running too hard into the landing and narrowly avoiding canoes and the Columbia, to falling into the water.

"We laughed a lot," Brown said.

Wilson, a professor, says he owes much to what he learned while piloting the Keel Boats and entertaining crowds.

"The Keel Boats meant everything to me," Wilson says. "I was so shy and introverted when I started at Disneyland; and when I transferred to the attractions, I really wanted to do the Keel Boats. I love Davy Crockett things."

Wilson says he gained a new persona thanks to the guys on the Keel Boats.

Carlson agrees.

"There’s nowhere else you can get that kind of people skills (than at) Disneyland attractions," he says. "(It) really taught me a lot about myself and how to work with folks from all walks of life."

According to Wilson, a there is nowhere else to gain public speaking skills.

"I tell my students all they need to be a good public speaker is to work a summer of Jungle," he told Patch. "Driving the boats was also amazing. I was good enough to put the nose of the boat anywhere, and that made me feel a sense of pride in my own skills that also taught me to trust in myself. This ride absolutely changed me for life."

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