Splash Mountain’s eviction is complete.
With the opening Friday of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, Disneyland has formally rid itself of an attraction that came to be seen as problematic. In its place is a ride that serves as a celebration, boasting a statement about the communal power of music and a narrative that serves as an American success story.
Centered on characters from the 2009 animated film “The Princess and the Frog,” Tiana’s Bayou Adventure makes the argument that thrill rides can enchant rather than frighten us. The ride still features its steep 50-foot drop begging us to hold on tight, but it reframes it. Princess Tiana, now a restaurateur, is throwing a Mardi Gras party, and we need to get there at once. That’s a stark shift from Splash Mountain, with its villainous fox and bear-hunting Br’er Rabbit.
Tiana’s, opening such as it is just about a week after one of our nation’s most divisive presidential elections, is not only a story about people coming together, but also a tale dedicated to those who may be overlooked, says Walt Disney Imagineering’s Josef Lemoine, who helped craft the ride’s narrative. He says such themes could be found in unexpected places, including the background of Louis the alligator.
“He felt like he had to be human to have his voice and abilities recognized,” Lemoine says. “Tiana goes, ‘No. We found you in the bayou. I think we’ll go look where everyone else is probably not looking.’ We want everybody to feel like they have something to contribute.”
It helps give the ride a lighthearted, upbeat feel, making it an attraction that’s based almost fully on the joy of community. And it’s one of a host of reasons we not only think the ride is a blast, but also why it’s an important addition to Disneyland. Here are six things you should know about the new attraction.
1. Goodbye, Critter Country. Hello, Bayou Country.
The opening of Tiana’s gives the newly christened Bayou Country its centerpiece attraction. The land, most recently known as Critter Country, now serves as a sort of extension of the nearby New Orleans Square, home to the quick service dining location Tiana’s Palace and “The Princess and the Frog”-themed shop Eudora’s Chic Boutique. The latter, named after Tiana’s dressmaker mother, features housewares and New Orleans-themed decor. Over in Bayou Country are two additional Tiana-related shops, Louis’ Critter Club and Ray’s Berets. The stores are your go-to for Tiana-themed plushies, headgear and toys, including an interactive and wearable light-up firefly.
Bayou Country also houses the family ride the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, the too-often overlooked Davy Crockett’s Explorer Canoes and the just-opened Hungry Bear Barbecue Jamboree, nostalgically themed to the late Country Bear Jamboree. But Tiana, with its looming, green-draped mountain, is the star. Including the ride, the west side of Disneyland is home to five “The Princess and the Frog”-themed locales, giving the chef-turned-entrepreneur one of the larger footprints at the Disneyland Resort.
2. The details entice you even before you enter the ride
One of the most striking sights at Tiana‘s occurs outside the ride, where the murals of Louisiana artist Malaika Favorite don the show building. Look for a series of large-scale paintings — Imagineering’s Ted Robledo, who along with Charita Carter and Carmen Smith oversaw the development of the attraction, notes these are the original hand-painted works. A few feature the alligator Louis and at various points show the interests of Tiana and her growing restaurant empire. They’re colorful, ever-so-slightly abstracted works, all connected via a rainbow tapestry.
At various points they detail group outings, such as playing music, working a garden or collaborating in a kitchen. All told, they help bring to life the Southern region Tiana’s aims to honor, and do so not with fantasy artwork but talent born of the area. They’re fluid and lively, a mix of people and colors that brim with brightness. It’s the rare ride that avoids conflict, and instead acts as a tribute to a city and a culture.
“We want to make sure that people recognize that we’re thinking about New Orleans as an incredible place of so many cultures,” Smith says. “We think about Choctaw Indians, and if you go through the queue you’ll see one of their stickball [artifacts]. It’s a sport that the Choctaw Nation played. There’s all these cultures and stories hidden throughout the queue.”
3. It’s a thrill ride that’s an anti-thrill ride
The skeleton of Splash Mountain and Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is the same, that is the ride still features its cleverly designed track layout, one that manages to disguise twists, turns and drops. Yet the story on Tiana’s has been simplified. There’s a heavily detailed queue that features newspaper clippings and knick-knacks that give us insight into Tiana’s business and life — we learn, for instance, her last name is Rogers — but ultimately this is a journey about finding musicians in the bayou for a giant Mardi Gras bash.
The ride features multiple songs from “The Princess and the Frog,” opening with “Down in New Orleans” and transitioning to “Almost There,” but once we drop into the bayou the soundtrack shifts to the jubilant and bouncy “Gonna Take You There.” The ride turns into a giant jam session. The score subtly shifts from zydeco to rara — the tones transitioning from that of a backwoods party to a street parade — before leading to an Afro-Cuban finale that builds to the sing-along “Dig a Little Deeper.”
But whereas Splash Mountain was about ramping up the tension — turning fear into fun — Tiana’s wants to use its hair-raising drops for something that feels more festive. Walt Disney Imagineering has in recent years been trying to upend the expectations that come with certain ride systems. See the transition of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror to Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout!, which took an elevator drop ride from spooky to comedic.
Likewise, Tiana’s wants to turn its centerpiece 50-foot drop into a thing to be welcomed. As we ascend up the lift hill, we do so with twirling, bright lights, which feature just a dash of twilight hues. My ride companion, The Times’ senior editor for video Mark Potts, remarked that it felt like going up to heaven. I can’t vouch for the factuality of that, but it resonates, as the emotion here is triumph.
“Life should be about enjoyment and having fun and having that sense of wonder. We want people to walk away feeling, ‘wow’ — drenched, yes — but that they have been on a magical journey where you’re getting a chance to feel a city, and hear the music of the city,” says Smith.
4. You’ll see some of Disneyland’s most advanced animatronics
But not all is so culturally realistic. This is still a Disney ride, after all, and one based on a fairy tale. That means cute critters.
There are three core bands of animals throughout the attraction — Disney has previously said Tiana’s features 19 original characters. Some are instantly charming, such as a rabbit playing a license plate as a washboard (that’s Gritty). Others, such as a big-cheeked frog named Mayra, will recall Dizzy Gillespie.
The frogs appear larger than life, as Tiana’s does utilize a popular theme park cliche of shrinking the audience at one point, but the scene also allows us to better see how all the animals are playing instruments made out of either found objects or forest materials. Check Felipe the frog, whose piano is constructed in part out of a chocolate box. Those who pay close attention to the queue may spot that Tiana is a fan of the very same candy brand. And then there are the bobcats playing single note trumpets (made out of bark and leaves).
Disneyland regulars who go on the ride multiple times will also become familiar with Lari the armadillo, a good-natured thief who appears multiple times throughout the ride. If you see an instrument made out of keyboard keys, the story goes that Lari is likely the one who swiped them from Tiana’s computer.
5. Disneyland has the definitive (and I’d say the better) Tiana’s
Tiana’s opened earlier this year at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, and the rides are virtually identical, save for some differences in track layout. The Florida version is also a tad longer, which results in some lengthier interstitial scenes without critters. But Imagineers noted that the ride was plotted using Disneyland’s version of Splash Mountain as the template. That’s because work properly got underway on the attraction during pandemic shutdowns of 2020 when parks were closed, meaning travel was at a minimum and the show building that was studied most closely was the one in Anaheim, as it’s clearly closer to Imagineering’s Glendale headquarters than Orlando, Fla.
The bulk of the decisions related to the ride, such as “where critters went, where characters went, where Tiana is,” were cemented in Anaheim, Robledo said. Robledo pointed out that he’s especially proud of the way in which the Disneyland version transitions into the bayou, as after a short drop we’re greeted by a burst of fireflies that gradually light up the forest that engulfs us and in moments explodes with music. I rode Tiana’s at both parks and while they are extremely closely related, the edge goes to Disneyland. It’s swifter, the animatronics are generally closer to us, and the slightly shorter ride time ensures there’s no elongated scenes without some critter action.
6. The change is part of a necessary push for a more inclusive Disneyland
If we can agree that Disneyland is, unlike a film or a television series, a living environment — a place born of one era but striving to be welcoming to subsequent generations — then it stands to reason that its attractions must change with the times.
In 2017, Disneyland at last gave women agency in its Pirates of the Caribbean attraction by removing a bridal auction scene and reimagining a female “wench” as a pirate. Amid the protests and cultural reckoning of 2020 that followed the murder of George Floyd, Disney announced it would strike “Song of the South” references from Splash Mountain and instead feature “The Princess and the Frog,” starring the company’s first Black princess. And in 2021 Disney remade parts of the Jungle Cruise to remove, in Disney’s words, “negative depictions of native people.”
These changes are necessary.
Though Splash Mountain aimed to skirt any controversy associated with “Song of the South,” a work long decried as racist for its idyllic view of slavery and the Reconstruction era, it could never divorce itself from the film. The goal of the original attraction was to be something of a cartoon sprung to life, and it did so by focusing only on “Song of the South’s” animated characters. Yet it was a tricky line to walk, and, in hindsight, perhaps even naive to believe the attraction could stand apart from a film that has long been out of circulation.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, then, is a course correction, and one that provides more opportunities for Disneyland’s wildly diverse fan base to see itself reflected in its rides.
Imagineering’s Carter recalled during a media presentation the release of the film about 15 years ago.
“For the first time,” Carter said, “I had a princess that looked like me.”
