Disney reveals new storyline details for Tiana's Bayou Adventure at Walt Disney World

Feb 04, 2023 in "Tiana's Bayou Adventure"

Gallery / 3 Photos
Tiana's Bayou Adventure storyline graphics

Posted: Friday February 3, 2023 7:00pm ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

Disney has today released new details on the storyline for Tiana's Bayou Adventure - the new attraction that will replace Splash Mountain at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom.

This overview of the story is described by Kevin Rafferty, Jr., Communications, Walt Disney Imagineering.

At a young age, Tiana developed a deep passion for cooking, and began to dream of one day owning her own business. Her father, James, taught her that good food brings folks together. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is going to show us where Tiana’s life has taken her following the success of Tiana’s Palace, a restaurant she had dreamed of owning and worked so hard to make come true.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure storyline graphics

Within the attraction queue, guests will discover that she continues to grow her business with Tiana’s Foods – an employee-owned cooperative. Combining her talents with those of the local community, Tiana has transformed an aging salt mine and built a beloved brand.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure storyline graphics

The endeavor began when Tiana purchased the salt mine and the area surrounding the large salt dome it operated from. With the help of her mother Eudora, Naveen, Louis and fellow owners of the cooperative, Tiana revived the old salt mine and the surrounding land, growing a wide array of vegetables, herbs and spices for her recipes.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure storyline graphics

This multi-faceted enterprise has turned the aging salt mine into a space that has come alive. Complete with a boutique farm and both a working and teaching kitchen, Tiana’s Foods is where Tiana and her colleagues create all sorts of new products that they are bringing to the world, including a line of original hot sauces.

Tiana wants to give a big thanks to her family and friends and the entire community for all the support they’ve given her by throwing an amazing party during Mardi Gras season. When it turns out there’s been a bit of a mix–up with the party preparations, Tiana invites us to meet her at Tiana’s Foods to help with the missing ingredient for the party.

Splash Mountain closed January 22 to begin work on Tiana's Bayou Adventure

When we arrive, we may see that Tiana spruced up the company’s facilities with vibrant art from local artists. Food for the party is being prepared and beignets are being loaded into crates for the celebration. All kinds of preparations are underway for the journey into the bayou with Tiana, along with new and familiar friends from the animated film.

Picking up where that story left off, Tiana continues bringing people together with Tiana’s Foods, another treasured meeting place to spend time together and celebrate a diverse community. Tiana is also working with cooperative members to teach gardening and cooking to children of all ages, and inspiring other women to run successful businesses as the brand grows nationwide.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure will open at Magic Kingdom in late 2024.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure logo

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Nickm20221 day ago

Rode it for myself for the first time and my honest thoughts are it's a good ride, but it sucks seeing the Disneyland POV and seeing how because it's smaller it seems and looks so much more detailed and paced better. I do like the ride but it feels like a Winnie the Pooh Mr Toads, when it should be a Fantasy Springs like ride. That said I actually think it will be one of the few rides that get's better in time. As things will likely get added into the ride to enhance it like what happens to all the E-tickets. And I think once that happens it will feel more complete. I also think (a conterversial opinion) Disney could make this ride feel like a better fit with the New Frontierland/Cars expansion with better landscaping and new buildings. Overall 7.5/10, Good theming, amazing AA and a stunning ending, just to much dead space and weird pacing.

Jedi143 days ago

As a fan of the original film, I rode the Disney World version three times over my trip last week, I enjoyed it.

Dranth5 days ago

We went mid-November and had our first ride on TBA. I waited a while to post anything so as to not be reactionary, but this is a bad update. The characters don't show any personality, the dialog is repetitive and annoying, half the ride feels sparse and devoid of life, the human AAs in particular feel off and flail around way too much. Not only that, but the number of broken AAs and issues on a ride that has had a half a year to iron these things out is completely unacceptable. Even from the get-go, when you first meet Tiana and watch her sit there mostly frozen waiting for each backed up boat to hit her sensor to activate you immediately get pulled out of the experience and it didn't get a whole lot better from there. I don’t know who is responsible for what with this thing and without knowing the exact inner workings of the company and what execs interfered (if they did), how much leeway the team had etc. I am not comfortable pinning this on any one person or group but as a whole, the company failed with this redo. At the end of the day, I know it is just a ride and still fun enough if for no other reason than the nature of the ride system itself, but this is a significant step back from what we had and a huge missed opportunity.

celluloid6 days ago

Not only has the outcome been lackluster, but concerned fans were also right about Disney not having the ride in very good condition for long. There is so much still operationally broken and still neglected that the thing is also already in deplorable shape. By the time it is out of its first season of long hour days of MK hard ticket event abuse...its just going to get uglier.

EagleScout6106 days ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Splash should have been down for two years at minimum. Gut it down to the bare bones and restart it. Give us something that actually resembles the film instead of the old How Do You Do sets dyed brown covered in plants. If they had done that and truly built something new and just left the layout of Splash I believe many would have been much much more forgiving of losing Splash.

mickEblu6 days ago

TBA disappointed a lot of people that were excited for the ride whether they expected a rehash of the film or not. This ride does the source material zero justice and that’s something I don’t think anyone really predicted. At the very least I think people thought the ride would feel like the movie and it doesn’t in the slightest. Doesn’t capture any of the magic from the movie or the setting. You have a dark forest posing as a bayou filled with unrecognizable characters*, Tianas cool aunt in her adventure outfit, no Facilier, no Ray and for all intents / purposes no Naveen. Even Louis looks like a big fuzzy teddy bear and doesn’t play any music. * to add insult to injury they happen to be far inferior to the AAs figures they replaced.

Incomudro6 days ago

I watched PatF right after Disney made the official announcement of the retheme. I watched it because I wanted to see if the film could lend itself well to the retheme of the ride. I was pleasantly surprised at what I saw.

LittleBuford7 days ago

The discussion in the original thread (linked below) doesn’t substantiate this. People were already asking on Day 1 how Facilier could possibly feature given that the story would take place after the film. Yes, some (myself included) were hoping they might include him in spirit form, but this was always understood as wishful thinking rather than a real likelihood. The mood surrounding the whole project was overwhelmingly pessimistic from the outset. The situation we’ve ended up with is bad enough as it is without having to pretend that Disney failed to deliver on the fans’ initial optimism. Such optimism was never more than a minority position—at least in this forum. https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/splash-mountain-re-theme-announced.965846/

Disgruntled Walt7 days ago

Ok, maybe most people didn't think it was going to be a complete rehash of the movie, but I think it's fair to say that most people were expecting the storyline to match the linear nature of the film's story, most likely using Dr. Facilier as the antagonist leading up to the drop. Also, when they say they're going to use the powerful music from the film, did we not all think "Friends on the Other Side" would be there?

JackCH7 days ago

I actually think the attraction itself is fine, but between the tech difficulties and Splash already being great it overall feels like a downgrade.

Fox&Hound7 days ago

I think they did a wonderful job with the exterior, love the queue much more than I thought I would, there are impressive AAs, but I feel the story is the weakest element. I am holding out hope that a few years from now we will get a halloween overlay that includes Dr Facillier and then due to positive fan reaction they will just keep it. I mean, couldnt they replace a few of the frogs in the scene before the lift hill with shadow creatures, change the music and lighting, and then make Facillier and his voodoo dolls appear on the screen where we now have giant Tiana and Louis. Does not seem impossible. :)

bwr8277 days ago

I’d give Tiana’s an 8/10. Rode it four times and enjoyed each one. Great music, fun animatronics, awesome drop and a gorgeous finale scene.

LittleBuford8 days ago

OK, but that doesn’t relate to what I actually wrote, does it?

EagleScout6108 days ago

We knew there was a chance for them to screw this up with how high of a bar Splash had set, but we thought they could pull this off. Then Disney started talking about Co-Ops, salt domes and employee owned companies...