Donkey Kong's River Country (CwGAm)

History
The ride was originally named Logger's Run when it opened in 1977. In 1989, the inner drop was disabled and all logs now go out the outer flume. Despite the change from Yukon Territory becoming rethemed to Nintendo Territory, the original name and theme stuck until it suddenly closed in the summer of 1995 due to "cracks forming in the structure found during a morning inspection", which was simply a lie in order to hide what was really happening.

After Nintendo purchased a minority stake in Rare, making them a second-party developer after the success of the Donkey Kong Country game in April 1995, with two sequels; Donkey Kong Country 2 and Donkey Kong Land, ready to follow in 1995; Carwardine approached Nintendo of Europe and Rare Ltd. about using the Donkey Kong Country IP to boost popularity for a ride getting low crowds except during the peak summer season.

Development on the retheme started after the ride's closure, with initial speculation on Carwardine's Usenet being that Logger's Run and Time Clipper's layouts would be combined into log flume themed to Battletoads, but by the time teasers started appearing at the park around Logger's Run with banana imagery, it was clear it'd be rethemed to Donkey Kong.

Donkey Kong's River Country was announced to 25 local newspapers and 5 local television stations in January of 1996, slated for a 1997 reopening, with a temporary "Preview Jungle" being set up near the ride's entrance for the entirety of the 1996 season, showcasing CG renders and blueprints of the newly rethemed ride.

The new ride would have the inner drop finally nearly fully demolished, replacing the alternating segment at the beginning with a fake, optical illusion where your log looks to be going into a cave with signage reading "Bananas! Bananas! BANANAS!" before the log juts right into a cave with a sign reading "WARNING! K. ROOL'S AQUADUCT! DO NOT ENTER!", the ride then goes down it's signature double drop in complete darkness.

The ride would also have a themed queue inside themed to Cranky's Cabin, this was quickly changed to having a queue themed to the DK Treehouse to be differnated from the queue lines for the Donkey Kong's Coaster Country coasters at Dylan Park and Billings' Wild Kingdom, It was also made clear that Time Clipper would be completely unchanged save for a few turns being curtailed away from DKRC to avoid riders high-fiving each other.

The ride would reopen on Memorial Day 1997, to high praise, with riders praising it's theming, use of on-board audio, animatronics, greenery, lighting effects in the tunnel sequences and use of special scents throughout the ride, giving it a very Disney-like experience, comparable to Splash Mountain or Pirates of the Caribbean. Several others liked the sudden drop in the dark.

However, the ride was prone to heavy downtime the following year due to growing issues with the new computer system Rare UK (with the help of British roller coaster and dark ride designer John Wardley) provided Carwardine with, not just to control the designated theming elements but also replaced Arrow's aging control panel, which, save for an E-stop button being added by TechEruo in the early 90s, was virtually unchanged.

The modernized control panel was clearly meant for British use, having to be plugged in via Type G, rather than Type A, and having to run via PAL mode rather than America's typical NTSC, for the 1999 season, TechEruo was sent in to convert the system for American use, being naturally Type A instead of needing a converter.

Another problem was the age of the log vehicles, as the logs were slowly deteorating, with Arrow no longer willing to provide replacement parts, and Hopkins requiring an entire retrack of the ride to retrofit their log fleet on. By the end of the 1998 season, only around 16 logs were on the course. So, in order to fix that, all the logs from the recently closed Grand Falls at sister park Billings' Wild Kingdom were moved for the 1999 season.