Tiana’s Bayou Journey has lastly changed Splash Mountain at Disney World. The Disney Parks YouTube account is celebrating the completion of this unprecedented transformation with a virtually 10-minute, 4K ride-through.
Our first impression? Holy moly, they truly pulled this off!
The experience’s designers needed to stroll a tightrope whereas reimagining — by way of scale and recognition — one of many largest rides at Disney’s theme parks. They would wish to take care of (or enhance upon) Splash Mountain’s abundance of animatronic characters, representing the basic method to Disney’s most iconic rides. However they’d even have to include trendy expertise (extremely high-resolution screens, customized 3D animation) for Bayou Journey to suit alongside the parks’ different new “E-ticket points of interest,” like Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Mickey’s Runaway Railroad.
In a choice that may please probably the most nostalgic amongst us, the design staff favored the old-school method, stuffing the experience with an astonishing variety of animatronic characters. They used screens to complement the expertise, just like the powdered sugar on a scrumptious beignet.
As with Splash Mountain, the experience has a relaxed begin. On a log flume, the friends take a leisurely tour of Tiana’s backyard and the close by bayou, earlier than gathering animal instrumentalists to play a tune on the Disney Princess’s restaurant. First, the riders meet a zydeco band that includes possums, beavers, bears, and wolves. Then, the voodoo priestess Mama Odie shrinks the riders to the dimensions of a frog to allow them to tour a mini-version of the bayou and befriend some musically gifted bugs and amphibian buddies.
The experience culminates, as promised by its premise, with a efficiency by Tiana at her restaurant, accompanied by her animal orchestra. By our depend, this humongous area options no fewer than 15 animatronics, a recreation of Tiana’s restaurant, and a wealth of high-res screens that includes extra characters from the movie, reimagined from 2D into 3D.
Splash Mountain, primarily based on the 1946 movie Tune of the South, opened in 1992, regardless of Disney having by no means launched the movie in the US on dwelling video because of its racist portrayal of life on a plantation within the Southern United States. In 2023, Scout Tafoya wrote about Disney’s lengthy historical past of trying to change or erase the historical past of Tune of the South, treating the movie like a cultural artifact that has change into poisonous with altering sensibilities. “However even in its day,” Tafoya writes, “Tune of the South was derided as racist pandering, and it confronted a nationwide try at a boycott.
In 2020, Disney Parks introduced Splash Mountain would get replaced by a experience impressed by 2009’s Princess and the Frog.
Tiana’s Bayou Journey opens at Walt Disney World on June 28 and later this yr at Disneyland. Polygon can be touring the experience forward of its opening, so go to later this month for first-hand impressions and interviews!