Disney gives reporters a first look inside Tiana's Bayou Adventure at Magic Kingdom

Jan 17, 2024 in "Tiana's Bayou Adventure"

Posted: Wednesday January 17, 2024 3:30pm ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

Disney is entering the final stages of transforming Walt Disney World and Disneyland's Splash Mountain attractions into Tiana's Bayou Adventure, and a few lucky reporters have been given a hard-hat tour inside for a look at the progress.

First look inside Tiana's Bayou Adventure

Mike Scott from NOLA.com was one of the reporters to go inside Tiana's Bayou Adventure, and you can read his full report at NOLA.

Here are some takeaways from the tour, led by Ted Robledo, Executive Creative Director of Walt Disney Imagineering.

Concept and Design: The retheme starts from the ride queue area, with storytelling elements integrated throughout. A mural by Malaika Favorite and various New Orleans-inspired artistic touches are featured. The first floor of the barn, that was the entrance to Splash Mountain, now houses the main offices for Tiana's Foods business.

Malaika Favorite mural at Tiana's Bayou Adventure

Integration of New Orleans Culture: The attraction includes a soundscape with New Orleans music, scents like beignets, and contributions from local artists and musicians like Terence Blanchard, Darryl Reeves, P.J. Morton, and the Chase family. In the outdoor queue, speakers will broadcast an old-timey radio show featuring reimagined New Orleans classics.

Ride Changes and Features: The ride maintains the same track and ride vehicles as Splash Mountain but incorporates new elements like native Louisiana flora, animatronic swamp animals, and scenes involving Tiana and other characters from the movie.

First look inside Tiana's Bayou Adventure

The loading area where guests board the ride vehicles includes cranes hoisting pallets of crates marked "Tiana's Foods," reinforcing the notion that it is a working food operation which Tiana founded after the events of The Princess and the Frog movie.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure set-piece delivery

Advanced AA Technology: The attraction uses advanced animatronics similar to those in Hong Kong Disneyland's World of Frozen, meaning we should see real physical faces, not projections. Tiana will make multiple appearances, seeking guests help to find a missing element for a Mardi Gras celebration she's planning.

Louis Audio-Animatronic figure at Walt Disney Imagineering

Tiana's Bayou Adventure - Concept art of first drop into the bayou

Preservation and Adaptation: While much of the interior architecture will be retained from Splash Mountain, new additions have been made. According to Walt Disney Imagineering, the tree trunk from the old attraction was removed to accommodate new elements.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure construction - January 10 2024

Final Surprise: Reporters were not allowed into the finale scene, and the tour stopped just before the Laughing Place scene. Robeledo said, "I'll just say it's got a lot to do with magic. It's a magical moment that happens down there."

Tiana's Bayou Adventure opens in 2024 at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. The earliest and most optimistic estimates place opening around Memorial Day (late May) at Magic Kingdom, but Disney has yet to make any announcement beyond "2024."

Tiana's Bayou Adventure logo

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SuddenStorm2 days ago

It was a fun piece of clickbait for cheap online articles. "The ride based on Disney's BANNED film". No one actually cared since they could ride the ride and see it was completely fine.

solidyne4 days ago

He is not saying the same thing. You deleted his next sentence. He said guests "are a fulcrum." He said it was absurd to think guest "have nothing to do" with decisions. Then he goes on to explain how guests do, in fact, factor in. You edited his post to make it look like you were saying the same thing. You: Disney does XYZ. They shouldn't do that. Poster: But ALL businesses necessarily do XYZ" You: So you agree with me! Me: Well, no, he doesn't really. By the way, I know you started using winky emojis as some defensive measure when you thought people weren't getting your jokes. But that never was the problem. It wasn't that they didn't know you were joking; it was that they disagreed with the point your jokes were making. So, you can ease up now with the winkies. People can understand jokes even if they don't like them.

Disgruntled Walt5 days ago

I like your new picture. "Quizzical Walt"

Disstevefan15 days ago

It was a necessary downgrade ;)

mickEblu5 days ago

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

Tha Realest5 days ago

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

Disstevefan15 days ago

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

EagleScout6106 days ago

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

DarrenD6 days ago

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

JMcMahonEsq6 days 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 Panther6 days 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.

Jayspency6 days ago

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

Disstevefan16 days 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.

JMcMahonEsq6 days 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.