New Video - A Deep Dive into the Making of Tiana's Bayou Adventure with Walt Disney Imagineers

Mar 22, 2024 in "Tiana's Bayou Adventure"

Posted: Friday March 22, 2024 10:39am ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

The New Orleans Book Festival hosted Walt Disney Imagineering for a panel discussion on "Bringing Tiana's Bayou Adventure to Life," moderated by Leslie Iwerks.

In this 45-minute video, you can hear from WDI's Charita Carter and Carmen Smith and "honorary Imagineer" Stella Chase.

The New Orleans Book Festival brings the world's leading authors to Tulane University for a multi-day celebration of their works. The Festival features both fiction and non-fiction and convenes readings, panel discussions, symposia and keynote speeches. It provides an opportunity for outlets, authors and readers to interact with each other in one of the most vibrant and culturally diverse cities in the world.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure will open in the summer of 2024, but Disney has yet to announce a precise date.

The earliest and most optimistic estimates place a soft opening around Memorial Day (late May), which may put an official opening sometime in July.

The upcoming D23 Down in New Orleans event on March 23 provides Disney with one of two opportunities to announce an opening date; the other is the Annual Shareholders meeting on April 3.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure testing - March 4, 2024

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EagleScout61011 minutes ago

As someone who recently watched SotS in full for the first time in years, I can say I get why the rest of the movie is sent to the vault, but not Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, Br'er Bear, and the other critters. Without them it's a very dull movie, save for James baskett. In a perfect world the Br'ers could have been fully separated from the rest of the movie, but alas.

Brer Panther47 minutes 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.

Jayspency2 hours ago

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

Disstevefan12 hours 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.

JMcMahonEsq2 hours 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.

Disstevefan13 hours 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.

JMcMahonEsq3 hours 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?

Ayla3 hours ago

Regardless if Splash would have stayed the same, it needed major work at the time of its demise.

Charlie The Chatbox Ghost3 hours ago

I think it's a bit of both. If Disney truly wanted to "erase" Splash they never would've built it to begin with. They only decided to change it because it was no longer profitable to have a ride based on Song of the South open, as it was bad PR. Inversely, they also realized they could sell more fast passes and merchandise with an IP that people actually know of. Two Mr. Blue Birds, one stone.

Disstevefan14 hours ago

Folks are forgetting Splash was erased and replaced by Tiana because DISNEY wanted to do it. The change had NOTHING to do with the guests or fans. Like EVERYTHING Disney did or will do (example the cars attraction) is because DISNEY wants to do it. If there are guests who happen to like a given change is pure coincidence.

Charlie The Chatbox Ghost4 hours ago

Look, I was a fan of Splash Mountain, but I'm not going to pretend there weren't any complaints. Unless we want to pretend that every single person complaining online in the last 20+ years (let alone just in 2020) were a paid actor by Disney, saying "no one ever complained about the ride" is an objectively wrong statement.