It was June 2020 – when all six of Disney’s U.S. theme parks were still shuttered amidst the COVID-19 pandemic – that Disney announced a major change few had expected. In the years that followed, both installations of Splash Mountain (at Disneyland Park since 1989 and Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom since 1992) would shed their names, stories, and associations with the controversial 1946 film Song of the South. In its place would arise a reborn ride based on 2009’s Princess and the Frog, bringing Disney’s first Black Princess to the parks in a major E-Ticket… just not a new one. Here’s our review of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure at Disneyland!
Yep, in the 21st century tradition of EPCOT’s Frozen Ever After (built atop the classic Maelstrom) or California Adventure’s Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! (a redesign of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror), Imagineers would preserve Splash Mountain’s flume, vehicles, layout, and scene structure, merely transforming them into something new. Trading the fables of Br’er Rabbit for a journey through the brackish wetlands of Louisiana, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure would become a new classic, and a must-see component of Disney’s continued modernization of the IPs its parks elevate.
Now listen – there’s no question that the transformation has been divisive. Countless Disney Parks fans have weighed in on the countless controversial aspects of the decision. Plenty has been said about whether this redesign was needed at all, and frankly, it’s beyond the scope of this article to dig into multifaceted discussions around racism, inclusivity, representation, and inevitable comparisons between Audio Animatronic counts or song selections. Instead, I’ll share a few key thoughts having ridden Disneyland’s Tiana’s Bayou Adventure on its opening day – November 15, 2024.
1. Disneyland’s version is glitchy, too
Splash Mountain loyalists expressed great schadenfreude when Magic Kingdom’s version of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure experienced dismal reliability at the time of opening. The ride would go hours or days without steady operation, experiencing “log jams,” broken systems, and evacuations constantly. Given that physically it’s the same ride as Splash Mountain, fans couldn’t quite figure out why the ride that had operated perfectly fine for thirty years was suddenly an operational nightmare…
As the story goes, the culprit isn’t the ride system, but the show controls. Rather than looping continuously as guests drift through “cocktail party” style scenes, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was designed so that each scene comes to life as a ride vehicle enters it, with animatronics speaking directly to guests (even following guests with their head and eyes!). But unlike a tracked dark ride where vehicle motion is precisely known and communicated to show control systems, the free-floating logs of Tiana’s scrambled the system, leaving massive back-ups as misfiring animatronics leading to downtime.
Well, it turns out those problems are inherent in the West Coast ride, too. On opening day of Disneyland’s version, Tiana’s didn’t begin call-backs of virtual queue groups until 11:30 – three and a half hours after park opening. After two hours of operation, it shuttered again for a multi-hour closure. It’s not the first impression Disney wanted for their new E-Ticket on its much-hyped opening day.
The good news is, by time I rode (in group 20 at about 3 PM), all of the ride’s animatronics were working – even if a few of their mouths weren’t. But I suppose that’s what you get when you put a dozen of Disney’s incredibly complex, next-gen Audio Animatronics figures in a water ride.
2. The “story” is fairly incoherent
Especially in the last decade, Disney Imagineers have clung hard to the notion of “story” guiding everything they do. (Apparently, they never visited Pixar Pier.) For Tiana’s, commitment to “story” is cited by insiders as the reason why the film’s villain isn’t present (he died in the movie, after all), why Tiana never appears in her recognizable dress (she’s now a business owner), and why when we hear songs from the movie, it’s through old radios, not from the characters themselves.
Much has already been said about this, but I’ll reiterate: aside from some placemaking in the queue that reminds us about a party at Tiana’s home that we’re invited to, we head into the ride fairly uncertain of what the “story” is meant to be. Unless you dove deep into Disney Parks Blog posts, it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to board the log understanding your “motivation” in a Shakespearean sense.
The first nod to a plot is an Audio-Animatronic of Tiana on the first lift hill who makes a sweeping announcement that we ought to look for Louis the alligator ahead, because he’s looking for a band. And then, we’re off. Searching for members of a band is theoretically the reason we float through the gardens of Tiana’s Foods, why we splash into the bayou, and then why Mama Odie “shrinks” us mid-way through the ride (lest we overlook any amphibian-sized instrumentalists). Still, I would wager that at least 50% of riders couldn’t tell you that “plot,” even though just about every character interaction we have along the way amount to a character reminding us to find band members.
Now, to be fair, I think 90% of Disney guests would be shocked if you told them that Splash Mountain had a story at all much less a moral lesson about reverse psychology, so maybe these high-energy flumes just aren’t great vehicles for conveying a plot. With that in mind, Tiana’s is probably appropriately simple.
3. The ride could use a little more life and character
On this metric, it’s difficult to not compare the ride to Splash Mountain, which famously featured over 100 singing, gesticulating, lip-syncing, and beautifully-stylized Audio Animatronics that sang in real-time to very catchy songs, absolutely filling every square foot of the dark ride. Obviously, those very spectacular figures didn’t make the jump to Tiana’s (and to be fair, they did originate in 1976’s America Sings, making them nearly 50 years old by this point).
But it is certainly somewhat disappointing that the 19 “critters” found on Tiana’s are nearly all simple “electro-mechanical” figures – in other words, they rock left and right or forwards and backwards, but that’s about it. We don’t hear their voices or get any sense of personality, especially as we swiftly float past them as the log chaotically ricochets against the flume walls. The entirety of the dark ride is basically us floating by a small group of simple animals playing instruments while an (impressive) animatronic of Tiana says something along the lines of, “Boy, they really can play!” Then she somehow beats us around the corner for the next set of animals as she says, “We’ve got to have them at the party!”
Disney made an effort to “introduce” those critters (like a raccoon with an accordion, bears with trumpets, and a turtle with a harmonica) in front-loaded social media posts, and has gift shops stocked with plush of them. But since we never really get to know any of them, their names are accessible only by way of printed lore, and they’re fairly simple figures, it’s not entirely likely that anyone would buy their merch except because they’re cute. Which is fine! But it seems like Disney had an opportunity here to have a Figment or an Albert or a Chandu, and instead the animals are blink-and-you’ll-miss them cameos.
So how does Disneyland’s version of the ride compare to Magic Kingdom’s? Join us on the next page as we make our official call…
