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.

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Disgruntled Walt6 hours ago

Best sweater ever!

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.

Jedi144 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.

Dranth6 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.

LittleBuford8 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 Walt8 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?

JackCH8 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&Hound8 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. :)

bwr8278 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?