The hill, the converted salt caverns in the last part of the queue that have crystals in the wall and signage, and the entire Tiana Foods empire seeming to be based on the McIlhenny Company headquartered on a salt dome.
It's funny because I don't believe McIlhenny was IN the Salt Mines, rather they were just on Avery Island, which is a salt dome about 56 feet high and 3 miles long. Basically, nothing like the hill we see for TBA.
Maybe it's a result of a post Cinema Sins world where we feel we need to justify everything to avoid people poking holes. A similar attraction which sits in Tokyo has a queue where you just enter a random aged barn that transitions to tunnels in the Georgia clay, then we wind down to a water way and jump in logs. It doesn't make a ton of sense, but we also don't get the feeling that is trying to. It is simply giving us a mood and setting for our upcoming experience.
Now that barn is Tiana's Foods, which is connected to mine shafts for Salt Mining. She seems to own the mine as well, but is using it as a way to get to the shipping area with cranes set up in the heart of the mine. Where we board logs to tour her commercial farm. Which consists of a few crops planted precariously on small ledges. \
I would have thought the farm would be bigger. Could have made an interesting exterior queue. But by forcing everything to carry story where it wasn't designed to carry story, makes a strange divide in the guest experience. The building wasn't designed for an immersive "you are characters in this story" experience. Its passive. A successor to Pirates where we vibe for a bit in the bayou before dropping down into the theatrical world of ride and characters where we float past moments in time. Imagine a Pirates queue at Disneyland where they tell us that Jack is trapped in Tortuga and we need to race there and help him out! Our help is needed! Then we board a boat and lazily float through a bayou, past a restaurant, see a guy playing a banjo, then dive down a water fall into more passive vignettes before finally seeing The Black Pearl.
It is something that Imagineers/management seems to not grasp with rethemes...the ride was designed to deliver story information and audience engagement in precise ways and when you ignore that, it creates a disconnect.
