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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Disgruntled Walt4 days ago

Best sweater ever!

Nickm20226 days 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.

Jedi148 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.

Dranth10 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.

celluloid10 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.

EagleScout61011 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.

mickEblu11 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.

Incomudro11 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.

LittleBuford12 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 Walt12 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?

JackCH12 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&Hound12 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. :)