Tiana’s Bayou Adventure SPOILER Thread

mickEblu

Well-Known Member
In general, I think asking a team to infuse their own story into an existing ride path isn’t a super easy task. You have to shoehorn everything into whatever awkward elements exist, like the prolonged backwards section in maelstrom for frozen

It shouldn't be that hard for professionals but apparently something is broken in their process and its making it hard.
 

mickEblu

Well-Known Member
So if the consensus is that the GP won't care how bad they dropped the ball on TBA and the parks/ ride will be slammed no matter what, can they ever truly fail when it comes to the parks/attractions or will they always be popular due to Disney's place in American culture and the unique product they offer (that is still objectively better than all of the competition) even if Universal is quickly catching up. We've seen they can definitely fail when it comes to the movies but parks seem to be immune. Every year an older fan who remembers what Disney was dies off and a new fan who will one day have rock bottom expectations is born.
 
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Chi84

Premium Member
So if the consensus is that the GP won't care how bad they dropped the ball on TBA and the parks/ ride will be slammed no matter what, can they ever truly fail when it comes to the parks/attractions or will they always be popular due to Disney's place in American culture and the unique product they offer (that is still objectively better than all of the competition) even if Universal is quickly catching up. We've seen they can definitely fail when it comes to the movies but parks seem to be immune. Every year an older fan who remembers what Disney was dies off and a new fan who will one day have rock bottom expectations is born.
I would just say different expectations not rooted in the past, but yes.
 

FigmentForever96

Well-Known Member


New POV shared on Youtube by someone at a preview. Much better video than Disney produced, shot during the day, and all of the speaking lines appear to be the alternate set. Dare I say it works better? I wasn't a hater but this at least looks a little better than the first video we've all seen.

Okay, this video actually made me enjoy the ride much better. The plot makes sense, even the shrinking to find animals in the log, so that was never an issue for me. My only real gripe is the open space in the first few sections of the interior ride. You’re left trying to see around the corner to see what’s up ahead.

Laughing Place is cute and I’m sure looks better in person when the screens actually blend into the sets better versus seeing them on video.

It’s not Splash Mountain but it definitely is a cute attraction.
 

WorldExplorer

Well-Known Member
I really don't like how they've set up the animatronics.

B'rer Rabbit was such a lively character with a strong personality and he had well done animatronics to back him up. Think of all the different poses he got (like rolling on the ground laughing at B'rer Fox) and how they really helped emphasize his character, plus made the ride feel more dynamic and lively. B'rer Rabbit wasn't standing around reacting to things or just talking, he was he was doing things, like when he was supposed to have just finished nailing up the door to his house while he wears a hobo bindle on his shoulder. There is instant visual recognition of exactly what he's doing there, and what he's doing is something important to the character and ride's story. When the story goes south he starts having things done TO him, but it's the same thing. It's not just look, there's B'rer Rabbit, he seems okay with things. Even at the end, when there's nothing left to do, his body language after his adventure is very specific to his character.

Tiana constantly standing/sitting around, gesturing vaguely, and smiling is such a massive downgrade. She's never doing anything specific, she's never dynamic, she's never expressing any emotion but happiness. It's boring, both visually and character-wise. Her going "Wow, they're good! They should join the band!" is repeated three times and it wasn't particularly fun to watch the first time. I guess the third time she sat down to say it; woo.

Heck, look at the scene where they seem to be intentionally copying B'rer Bear getting stuck in the hole except with Louis. In that scene, B'rer Fox was trying to push him through. Here Tiana is the one accompanying Louis and there isn't really any reason for her to be ignoring him here, but she just doesn't acknowledge him so she doesn't even get the chance to look at him like she might be concerned. Even if they don't want to put her in B'rer Fox's role for a scene, surely just a look of "oh no!" would be fine?

I'm highlighting the protagonists because that's the obvious comparison, but I think that applies to the attraction over all. Just to give one example, the Splash Mountain designers could have easily just had B'rer Fox and B'rer Bear standing in a field lamenting that B'rer Rabbit always tricks them, and they could had them wave their arms while they did it, too. I daresay it would have been a lot easier. But they knew it would be more fun and visually interesting to have them standing on top of each other setting a trap and then caught in that same trap. Here Louis does nothing but stand around and talk about how great the other animals' music is (outside of a scene that is copying Splash Mountain). They didn't even want to give him a trumpet to play with them?

To give another example, where's Tiana's equivalent of the million dollar bunny?

Them choosing the most boring story physically possible with no stakes or even obstacles (for her, we inexplicably shrink. Again there's no real reason she couldn't be included in this, but she's left out) isn't an excuse. Choose a different story. Or maybe if they used their space wiser then Tiana could actually be exploring and they could come up with better scene set ups from there, instead of the animals just popping up and her nodding in approval.

Having animatronics means nothing if you're terrible at staging them. Even if they are dead set on making sure Tiana has no character outside of "positive" and never has anything remotely bad happen to her, she could still take part in visually interesting scenes, and so could Louis.
 

Tom Morrow

Well-Known Member
The more I think about it, the more I think this is actually up there with Disney's biggest and most baffling changes. Right up there with gutting the original Imagination and changing it to what they did.

The plot is the most insipid thing they could have possibly come up with. "Tiana needs to go mail her tax return" would be equally as enthralling.

The music all sounds bad and lacks any energy or whimsy. The music does not match the scenes either, like they're just playing random soundtrack selections and not music made for a flowing attraction. Having vocals in the outdoor sections where no characters are present to sing them is also not great. Again, like someone stuck the soundtrack CD in to play on a PA system.

Tiana and all the animatronics are just standing there awkwardly. We almost see them "activate" as you approach. It gives off a cheap vibe. In Splash, you were just passing through life and activity that was already happening. When the boats enter the show building and make the first turn where the birds and frogs would have been, and instead all you see if a giant Louis animatronic standing there just waiting for your boat to trigger his show scene - that combined with the overall emptiness, I honestly felt this was a little unnerving.

Why do we discover the critter band already together? This plot device already sucks and we just discover them already having formed a band. All bunched up. Why not spread them out?

Why does Tiana talk like she's had a lobotomy? "Wooooww, they suuuurrreee cannnn plaayy". The dialogue and the overly simplistic plot make the whole thing come off as a Disney Junior attraction, albeit with thrill elements and a height requirement.

I saw a comment on YouTube that I can't find but it basically said that a big part of Splash Mountain was the fun of diving into this critter world that feels like its alive and existing before you got there and you're just passing through on your journey. The same way Br'er Rabbit is. None of that is present here. It's like an expensive version of walking up to motion-activated Halloween decorations in a Spirt Halloween store.

There's just SO much that's weird and awkward about this execution. What a completely joyless, focus-grouped-to-death failure. I WANTED this to be awesome really badly. I'm also scared that actual constructive criticism of this attraction will be drowned out or grouped with all the idiots complaining about alleged "wokeness" and Disney will tune it all out and learn nothing.
 
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Dear Prudence

Well-Known Member
That's true but they can pull it off Freeform or D+ at the drop of a dime. To build a ride around the character is probably deemed to be an unnecessary risk. Remember Disney doesn't necessarily feel that he's problematic. They re worried that that one day people ( or like 3 people) might feel that he is. Clearly that is not a popular sentiment based on the YouTube comments.
There were a lot of people who were upset when the film came out, and were very vocal about it.

As problematic as he is, that friends on the other side song is a HIT. Randy Newman is not a fave of mine by any stretch of the imagination, but I conceded to it being a great song when I heard one.
 

mickEblu

Well-Known Member
How many Tiana AAs are in this ride? 5? 3 would have been just fine. Why not 3 and then use that extra money for more critters and some actual AAs that don’t just rock back and forth?
 

SuddenStorm

Well-Known Member


New POV shared on Youtube by someone at a preview. Much better video than Disney produced, shot during the day, and all of the speaking lines appear to be the alternate set. Dare I say it works better? I wasn't a hater but this at least looks a little better than the first video we've all seen.


I just can't get over how Tiana and Louis spend the bulk of their dialogue shouting exposition at the rider. It's like Disney trying to force feed us the story, instead of designing a ride that's able to just tell a story like Splash did.
 

mickEblu

Well-Known Member
Circling back on this. The video is now YouTube trending (at #14) and has 339K views, so it isn't just channel subscribers that are seeing this anymore. As the viewership increases so does the gap between likes and dislikes. What was once a 50/50 has now become 39/61. While the GP tends to give more of a pass on attractions than the die-hard fans, I don't think the excuse of hardcore SM people pushing this will fly for much longer. Even the GP can tell the difference between a well-made attraction and an inferior product.

View attachment 789068

Right and I think we have acknowledge that its not just hardcore fans or GP you have a cross section of casual Disney Parks fans watching that video contributing to the 61%
 
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Dear Prudence

Well-Known Member
Circling back on this. The video is now YouTube trending (at #14) and has 339K views, so it isn't just channel subscribers that are seeing this anymore. As the viewership increases so does the gap between likes and dislikes. What was once a 50/50 has now become 39/61. While the GP tends to give more of a pass on attractions than the die-hard fans, I don't think the excuse of hardcore SM people pushing this will fly for much longer. Even the GP can tell the difference between a well-made attraction and an inferior product.

View attachment 789068
People who don't know anything about this are being shuffled this video,and are like, oh, absolutely not, I've seen enough.
 

Tha Realest

Well-Known Member
There were a lot of people who were upset when the film came out, and were very vocal about it.

As problematic as he is, that friends on the other side song is a HIT. Randy Newman is not a fave of mine by any stretch of the imagination, but I conceded to it being a great song when I heard one.
Who is problematic?
 

Dear Prudence

Well-Known Member
Who is problematic?
Dr. Facilier. There are a lot of scholarly articles that came out when the movie originally did that talked about why, that I won't rehash here, but you're free to do your own search. I should say that I am surprised it doesn't come up more, but I am not because then people would have to confront and unpack their own biases.
 

SpectreJordan

Well-Known Member
I'm trying to reserve judgment until I ride it. But it really sounds like their real reason for canning Splash was because of its abundant animatronics, not being socially aware as they claim.

It feels like another version of The Great Move Ride to Mickey. They hid behind an excuse ("We want to focus on our IPs"), but they really just want to cutdown on animatronic maintenance costs. I guess Tiana's is a bit better since there's at least some impressive scenes (from what I've seen the finale looks great), while Mickey doesn't.

I hope I'll like it when I ride it, but it sadly seems like a downgrade from what we had before. It seems disrespectful to one of the most iconic attractions in Disney history as well as the Princess & the Frog IP. :/
 

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