General Discussion of Tiana's Bayou Adventure

[HauntedPirate]

Where are you seeing that he did?

Crap. Of course I can’t find where I read that now.

However, I find it hard to believe that he had much creative involvement with what has been shared thus far. The same guy who gave us BTM, Splash, Journey Into Imagination, et al., is helping give us this? That’s math I cannot do.

ETA: I think you gave the reasons why we haven’t heard anything out of him around this project. It’s very telling.

 

[celluloid]

How many of those celebrity entrepreneurs were turned into a frog?

This isn't a NatGeo historical travelogue.

1. That won't likely be happening in the attraction, remember this takes place after the film and adheres to the yet to be released series.

2. Because of the first thing on this list and the story published. It feels more like one.

 

[Kirby86]

He's not the leader on this project (even if I suspect he might be taking the lead over the interior scene designs), and he's also an independent consultant instead of a full employee at Disney. There's probably also a fear at Disney of allowing an "old white man" to "upstage" Carter's team in any way on their own project. Keep in mind that Tony Baxter created Splash Mountain in the first place. And with Disney trying to purge all traces of that ride from existence, along with any connecting threads, that's another reason they'd probably want to downplay his involvement in the replacement.

This is a bad move to be clear. Most of the doubt involving this project is due to a lack of faith in Carter's team and their abilities (a very valid concern). Letting Tony speak more on his involvement with the project would help to diffuse quite a bit of this negativity. But like I said, it will take attention away from Carter. And Disney likely considers that to be risky from a PR perspective given who they're trying to pander to with this project.

Bob Weis was another I was told worked on this project. And he has his own baggage that would be pointed out if there was mention of his involvement (especially regarding the scrapped Disney's America theme park).


It's not even a bus driver rumor, they literally said they were joking and didn't actually know.

Put me in the camp of being leary of Carters team. I wasn't a huge fan of Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway. Although I heard the queue is Disneyland is amazing.

Also I don't know why Disney would be afraid now of Baxter being known as part of the project. Yes he's the designer of the ride they're retheming and trying to forget. However the genie is out of the bottle they themselves let everyone know that he was consulting on the ride.

 

[drizgirl]

• I think they put this out relatively early in the process in hopes any negativity might blow over

This early in their massive highly watched project they needed a game plan for negativity? I don't think so.

I think they are likely quite shocked by the negative reaction. Because you don't design something for a theme park you think people will react negatively to. They thought everyone would be as excited as they are.

 

[drizgirl]

It’s set after the film, though.

It's fiction. They can choose for it to be whatever they want it to be.

 

[GhostHost1000]

This early in their massive highly watched project they needed a game plan for negativity? I don't think so.

I think they are likely quite shocked by the negative reaction. Because you don't design something for a them park you think people will react negatively to. They thought everyone would be as excited as they are.

Which concerns me about their decisions and decision making. They don’t seem to get it from the guests perspective. Many things (ex. Genie, park reservations, magical express, etc etc)

 

[Brer Oswald]

Put me in the camp of being leary of Carters team. I wasn't a huge fan of Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway. Although I heard the queue is Disneyland is amazing.

Also I don't know why Disney would be afraid now of Baxter being known as part of the project. Yes he's the designer of the ride they're retheming and trying to forget. However the genie is out of the bottle they themselves let everyone know that he was consulting on the ride.

Yeah it wouldn’t make too much sense, especially considering that a majority of Disney Adults in support of the retheme are in love with Tony and his other projects (Big Thunder, Indy, and of course Figment).

 

[LittleBuford]

It's fiction. They can choose for it to be whatever they want it to be.

True, but it wouldn’t make much sense for them to turn back into frogs. There is so much potential for magic without that happening anyway.

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

Crap. Of course I can’t find where I read that now.

However, I find it hard to believe that he had much creative involvement with what has been shared thus far. The same guy who gave us BTM, Splash, Journey Into Imagination, et al., is helping give us this? That’s math I cannot do.

My assessment is that Carter and her team are solely responsible for the backstory. It doesn't seem like something Tony would come up with. Tony might have given pointers on the script and such to try and clean it up a bit, but the Salt Mine and food company concept probably originate from Carter's core group. There are others working on this project who fought against using this backstory, but they were overruled.

Again, I suspect Tony's involvement is likely going to be focused on the interior, where I suspect and hope Carter's backstory will be more subdued. I've said before that it seems like there were two clashing visions for this ride, neither of which really "lost". You've got Carter's salt mine food company backstory, but then you've also got the "musical swamp critters having a mardi gras party".

I don't expect this ride to have the sort of cohesion BTM, Splash and Imagination v1 did because Tony was the actual leader on those projects and he's not with Tiana. But I do have some hopes that Tiana might still retain certain things that people enjoyed about Splash, enough where it probably won't become an embarrassment on the level of Imaginations 2 and 3.

Put me in the camp of being leary of Carters team. I wasn't a huge fan of Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway. Although I heard the queue is Disneyland is amazing.

Also I don't know why Disney would be afraid now of Baxter being known as part of the project. Yes he's the designer of the ride they're retheming and trying to forget. However the genie is out of the bottle they themselves let everyone know that he was consulting on the ride.

I don't like the Mickey ride. At least Disneyland didn't have to lose another fantastic ride to get it though unlike WDW (blessing of size my ***). Still, they could have done so much better. I'm glad that it looks like Tiana is seemingly going to be a much more physical ride at least.

As is quite clear from all the doubt surrounding this project, not allowing Tony to give plentiful reassurance on his involvement is a mistake. But given the reasons this project exists, they're likely skittish about allowing him (again an "old white man" who created the ride they're so desperately trying to purge) to take any attention away from Carter.

 

[Tha Realest]

This isn't a NatGeo historical travelogue.

oh you’re not wrong. NatGeo would do a much better job entertaining us

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

Yeah it wouldn’t make too much sense, especially considering that a majority of Disney Adults in support of the retheme are in love with Tony and his other projects (Big Thunder, Indy, and of course Figment).

There are a lot of tricky conditions present with this project that wouldn't normally apply to most others projects.

 

[celluloid]

True, but it wouldn’t make much sense for them to turn back into frogs. There is so much potential for magic without that happening anyway.

There were two types of magic from this property.

Transformation into animals and understand the anthropomorphic ones.
The other was the viel of life and death being the shadow world and manipulated.

Both of these things are absolutely absent from what is known about the attraction thus far, other than Mama Odie being present. So we may be lucky to have a gag where the abused snake is changed into other things on accident by the blind woman.

 

[Tha Realest]

There were two types of magic from this property.

Transformation into animals and understand the anthropomorphic ones.
The other was the viel of life and death being the shadow world and manipulated.

Both of these things are absolutely absent from the attraction thus far, other than Mama Odie being present. So we may be lucky to have a gag where the abused snake is changed into other things on accident by the blind woman.

The company’s slogan over the last year while this storyline was tightened was that “you” are the magic. We’ll see how much of that carries over into the attraction.

 

[celluloid]

The company’s slogan over the last year while this storyline was tightened was that “you” are the magic. We’ll see how much of that carries over into the attraction.

Like the slogan and 50th anniversary in general, I think this attraction will be over promised and underdelivered by then.

 

[LittleBuford]

There were two types of magic from this property.

Transformation into animals and understand the anthropomorphic ones.
The other was the viel of life and death being the shadow world and manipulated.

Both of these things are absolutely absent from what is known about the attraction thus far, other than Mama Odie being present. So we may be lucky to have a gag where the abused snake is changed into other things on accident by the blind woman.

Mama Odie was a big part of the magic of the film, so I take her inclusion in the ride to be a good sign.

 

[celluloid]

Mama Odie was a big part of the magic of the film, so I take her inclusion in the ride to be a good sign.

The quest to find her was a big part of the film.
Her magic should be there in some regard to take us to look at the world from one of the animal's point of view. If the main characters are not going to be frogs, we should be transformed into that outlook to learn what is important....and as a device to hear the other animals speak and sing, including Louis.

The only use of her magic in the property has been to show people what matters, to get them to "see" as she is blind and it creates the juxtaprose metaphor.

The thread on the subject lately has been for storytelling critiques.

 

[Phil12]

Splash was such a popular attraction that it always had a very long queue. I think the idea here is to re-theme the attraction so that long time fans will be upset and refuse to ride the new attraction. This will open up space for new fans on the new attraction. Brilliant! They used a very similar technique on Journey Into Imagination over at Epcot.

 

[brettf22]

Ah, backstory.

2% of guests will love it and expound about it at every opportunity, to whomever is within earshot. “Do you know that this is built on a salt dome that Tiana bought when …”

2% of guests will roll their eyes at the incongruities and forced nature of the backstory.

96% will have no idea there is a backstory, and will simply enjoy riding the ride, while narrating the entire experience to their children. “Look, Kayleigh, it’s Tiana! Look, Kayleigh, it’s a turtle! Look, …”

Personally, as long as they keep those cannon-like vents in the queue that blow life-giving, arctic-temperature air conditioning at random locations, I’m good.

 

[drizgirl]

Ah, backstory.

2% of guests will love it and expound about it at every opportunity, to whomever is within earshot. “Do you know that this is built on a salt dome that Tiana bought when …”

2% of guests will roll their eyes at the incongruities and forced nature of the backstory.

96% will have no idea there is a backstory, and will simply enjoy riding the ride, while narrating the entire experience to their children. “Look, Kayleigh, it’s Tiana! Look, Kayleigh, it’s a turtle! Look, …”

Personally, as long as they keep those cannon-like vents in the queue that blow life-giving, arctic-temperature air conditioning at random locations, I’m good.

The back story is going to be more critical on this ride since everyone's first question is "why is there a mountain in the bayou?" It's hard to avoid when it used to be called a mountain and now has bayou in the title.

 

[aladdin2007]

The back story is going to be more critical on this ride since everyone's first question is "why is there a mountain in the bayou?" It's hard to avoid when it used to be called a mountain and now has bayou in the title.

agree, but remember they are squashing the mountain, removing the top, its going to look smaller once they do that and with the added trees. Just as dumb as holing up maelstroms cool rock opening...Bad imagineering, if it can even be called imagineering anymore.