Walt Disney Imagineering unveils progress on Tiana's Bayou Adventure Animatronics

Sep 11, 2023 in "Tiana's Bayou Adventure"

Gallery / 1 Photo
Louis Audio-Animatronic figure at Walt Disney Imagineering

Posted: Monday September 11, 2023 10:53am ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

During this past weekend's Destination D23 event, Walt Disney Imagineering gave us a rare look inside the Audio-Animatronics Workshop as work continues on Tiana's Bayou Adventure.

Louis Audio-Animatronic figure at Walt Disney Imagineering

In the video below, a large audio-animatronic version of Louis is being assembled before being installed inside the attraction.

Speaking at the event, Disney Parks Chairman Josh D'Amaro said, "These folks are doing amazing work. They're hard at work on all the figures that we're just packing into this attraction. It's going to be such a great experience experience, bringing you a new story from Tiana's world that picks off right where that classic film left off."

Tiana's Bayou Adventure will open in late 2024 at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom and Disneyland.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure logo

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Disgruntled Walt1 day ago

I like your new picture. "Quizzical Walt"

Disstevefan11 day ago

It was a necessary downgrade ;)

mickEblu1 day ago

They reskinned a jet to celebrate the reskin of an attraction where a Fox threatened to skin a rabbit.

Tha Realest1 day ago

They reskinned a jet to celebrate the reskin of an attraction.

Disstevefan11 day ago

Exactly. Exactly We agree completely. When I said this, it was absurd. I wont say that ;)

EagleScout6101 day ago

Only took them a year to get it working. Progress, I guess

DarrenD1 day ago

Rode 2x times yesterday and it was working well! The most amount of stuff I've seen working since opening :)

JMcMahonEsq1 day ago

Again, I don't get what your point is. Disney is a for profit publicly traded company. Everything decision is done for the benefit of the company/Disney. The officers of any company have fiduciary duty to make all decision in the best interest of the company. The sole purpose of any decision of a company is to benefit the company. They aren't non-profits or charities where the intended goal/purpose is to benefit a certain subset of the population. Guest/fan feelings are never a goal or why companies make decisions. They are a fulcrum to support goals. Businesses offer guest what the they want in order to make money. They don't make money in order to give customers what they want.

Brer Panther1 day ago

I know that just by posting this I'm stepping into a minefield, but I genuinely do not remember seeing any complaints, or hearing of any complaints, about Splash Mountain being problematic before 2020. At most, I saw people say "Hey, isn't it kind of funny that they built an attraction based on this movie they banned?" but I don't think any of those were meant as complaints.

Jayspency1 day ago

Most of what Disney does nowadays is mostly done based on what looks good on paper.

Disstevefan11 day ago

Can you please talk to Disney's movie business ;) OK, ok, "nothing" is an absurd term. Extreme terms like "nothing" is low hanging fruit for folks who want to argue. In my opinion, Disney makes decisions mostly for Disney and lesser for guest/fans.

JMcMahonEsq1 day ago

From a strictly authorization standpoint, of course Disney does what it wants to do. Every business does what it wants to do at the end of the day, guest/fans have no say in an operation of any business. However to say guest/fans have nothing to do with decisions is just absurd. Disney is looking for Profit. That means decisions are made to increase profits. This can come in the form of direct increase in sales, direct decrease in costs, or increasing attendance/mitigating loss through customer good will. Out of those 3 methods to achieve the goal, 2 of them are directly related to customers. You need your customers to keep coming and buying tickets to the parks and need them to continue buying things. The only way of increasing profit that isn't directly related to customers is decreasing costs, but even that has to be weighed with the idea of will decreasing cost result in a loss of 1 or 3. And the millions spent on a re-skin of Splash Mountain certainly wasn't a direct cost saving.

Disstevefan11 day ago

You can drill back on my post and I said this way before the reskin happened - I never said it was on a whim, Disney had THEIR reasons, I will attempt to guess; number one, social justice, perhaps the old animatronics and systems were getting too expensive to fix and maintain, no spare parts, must have replacement parts custom made etc. I really think they decided to expend huge dollars in labor, materials, engineering costs, to kill two birds; lower maintenance in the long run (that appears to be NOT working at the moment) and social justice. My main point of this post is, Disney does what they want to do. Their decision has nothing to do with their guests or fans. If there are guests who happen to like a given change it is pure coincidence.

JMcMahonEsq1 day ago

Wait wait wait. I am confused, is Disney a greedy corporation who is out just to make the maximum amount of money, or are they not? So your saying WDW took down a ride that was operating fine and people were riding. Decided to expend huge dollars in labor, materials, engineering costs just because? They SPENT millions of dollars...on a whim? It wasn't to make money? And lets face it its only guests and fans that pay money so if they are, its for something they want. So WDW didn't look at any data/studies and say if we do this replacement, it will result in customers wanting things enough to pay/attendance/ect? Your story is they just WOKE up on a Tuesday (get it....WOKE up, come on its funny and almost Friday) and decided to spend millions of dollars for nothing?