Shalom Sesame It's a Small World(04:11)
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"It's a Small World" is the theme song from the Disney attraction of the same name that premiered at the Pepsi pavilion at 1964/1965 World's Fair in New York. The attraction, which celebrates international harmony, was moved to Disneyland in 1966 and has since been duplicated at the Magic Kingdom theme parks in Walt Disney World, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Performances

• Spike Milligan and the Muppets sing "It's a Small World" as the closing number of the internationally themed episode 317 of The Muppet Show, paying tribute to the Muppets' favorite country, Disneyland. The set mimics the Mary Blair-designed buildings of the ride, and characters bob up and down in the manner of the Disneyland animatronics.

• At the end of Shalom Sesame: The People of Israel, Bonnie Franklin and the cast of Rechov Sumsum sang this song in English, Hebrew, and Arabic.

Theme park attraction

• During the failed sale of the Muppets to Disney in 1990, a proposed take-over of Disneyland by the Muppets was put into pre-production. With Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the other Disney characters on a year-long vacation after Disneyland's 35th Anniversary Celebration, many of the park's attractions would feature Muppet touches. Among those was the Small World ride, with Miss Piggy taking the place of the winking Cleopatra.^[1]

References

• Muppets inspired by the Audio-Animatronic children from the attraction appear in The Muppets at Walt Disney World during the song "Rockin' All Around the World", where they sang a line from their signature song. Similar characters also appear in the "Tribute to All Nations (But Mostly America)" finale of Muppet*Vision 3D.

• In the 2006 book Before You Leap, Kermit the Frog says that his bank, Bank of Amphibia, uses the song as hold music, which irritates him. Bank of America also sponsored the attraction at Disneyland from 1966 to 1993.

• In The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, Pepe (as Toto) says of arriving in Oz (and seeing the tiny houses in Munchkinland), "It's a small world after all."

Sources

1. ↑ The Muppety Makeover of Disneyland That Almost Happened. Hill, Jim. December 19, 2011. The Huffington Post