Chad Thundercaulk
Member
Disneyland is a work of love. Look at how Walt talks about the park, look at Tony Baxter describing his days in the park as a kid. I seriously question if the current WDI team loves the park in that way.
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Tiana's Bayou Adventure: Disneyland Watch & Discussion
- Thread starter Californian Elitist
- Start date
SuddenStorm
Well-Known Member
Bruce Gordon is another imagineer who's love ran deep.
Those are the kinds of people that need to be working there.
And to see their work get gutted by whatever the heck wdi became is a shame.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
I'm hoping you are right.
For whatever reason, the leading executives on this project don't want to talk much about what the actual ride experience is going to be like for people. Instead, they keep talking about what the queue experience will be like and how we'll be able to notice all these little details that add layers of inane backstory to the ride.
I could understand that from WDI in 2020 or 2021, because this project was thrust on them by surprise and it clearly had very little development behind it when Bob Iger clumsily announced it publicly in June, 2020. But now it's 2023 and both rides are closed and under active construction, so they have to know what's going in to the ride itself.
But they're being coy and mostly silent on what's inside the actual ride, and instead they are weirdly offering up minor details like the fact that the queue music will appear to be playing from a circa 1930 Avrin brand radio (Uh... okay?) and Ralphie will play the drums using a circa 1920 Zildjian drum set (Uh... okay?).
This is most definitely a poorly managed news/PR cycle for them. The best hope we have now is that's all there is to it, and someone just let the communications on this get messy for no good reason.
And that 18 months from now we'll have a musical log ride that is fun and upbeat, not overwrought and heavy.
This should be simple fun, with good music and an easy to follow story. Like helping to find Louis' trumpet before the big Bayou Bash. Or searching for Tiana's missing ingredient. Not much else needs to be added. Aside from a few thrilling drops, of course.
Disneyland is not rocket science. It's just a wildly successful theme park that enjoys lavish budgets and top-tier talent.
The leadership ranks for the parks are suddenly making this all way too hard on themselves, and I can't figure out why?
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EPCOTCenterLover
Well-Known Member
They might love the parks, but based on most of the choices lately, it seems they have very different ideas about what makes a great attraction.
BubbaisSleep
Well-Known Member
Although it rarely happens my heart does warm a bit when I see Kim Irvine do interviews. She clearly loves the parks whether I like her projects or not (mostly do).
???
Song of the South is based on the Uncle Remus Tales, written by Joel Chandler Harris…a white man.
To call Splash a ride that told African American/African folklore is quite disingenuous.
Exactly. They’re attraction details, not stuff that will be essential to understanding a ride down the bayou for Mardi Gras. I thought DL fans liked details?Ahh, well now it all makes sense lol. Jk
Exactly, someone on another post said exactly what I’d image. The queue containing a lot of details & probably some props after the first two outdoor lift hills, but after the first drop it will look like old Splash but with a bayou theme. I’m sure most topics released will be limited to a corner or shelf in the queue accompanied by a newspaper explaining, similar to many Potter queues.
I love love love NOLA, Walt’s version at Disneyland is what made me want to go so on my second ever flight at 23. I took my brother to Mardi Gras in 2015 & I’ve been back 3 times since. The bayou is such a fun place to visit & I have a feeling this ride will be gorgeous. I’m imagining the boat ride at Avatar’s Pandora but with gorgeous swamp trees and fireflies everywhere. Possibly screens used in some scenes like in the Avatar boat ride too to give it more ambiance & depth. I’ll miss splash but I’m really excited for Tiana to come! I actually took a picture of the tree that Mama Ode’s home was based off of last year below. So cool!
I’m dying to get to New Orleans. I’ve been having to put it off, but it’s for sure first on my list in terms of the next domestic city I’d like to visit!
Yes, exactly! I don’t have time for Uncle Toms, aka Uncle Remus! Song of the South is still very much based on stuff written by a white man. So…nothing’s changed there. Yay!
CatfishBend
New Member
Where do you think Joel got the stories from?
Andrew_Korenchkin
New Member
It's an amazing city and easily my favorite city in the world. The WW2 Museum is one of the best museums in country, too.
He appropriated stories and came up with Uncle Remus on his own. He is the author of the Uncle Remus Tales, not the slaves he came into contact with.
If folks actually cared about the actual lore, they would be looking everywhere BUT the Uncle Remus Tales.
Vegas Disney Fan
Well-Known Member
Seems to be a lot of this lately, Disneys CEO calling their most loyal fans an undesirable mix, Bud lIghts marketing exec calling their loyal customers frat boys… there’s a lot of disdain in executive suites for average people, it’s amazing these high paid execs with their Ivy League degrees aren’t smart enough to realize average Joes make up the vast majority of the people who buy their products and pay their outrageous salaries.
I’d like to go for the food and music alone, but its history is rich. I want to see it all.
Midwest Elitist
Well-Known Member
Reddit about to destroy it's site...
No wonder us younger generations are far less optimistic of capitalism... But that's not a topic to go down.
Vegas Disney Fan
Well-Known Member
I wonder if they’re saving the ride details for D23?I think all this talk from Disney regarding seemingly superfluous story details (like the WW1 stuff) is probably just them blowing very minor queue details up into something "newsworthy" due to a lack of (or unwillingness to show) major attraction updates right now.
All the little backstory stuff and fluff they've talked about so far will probably just end up being fun little details in the queue a la Tower of Terror, Roger Rabbit, etc. -and that's awesome. But I think the issue some folks might be having with the current news cycle or lack/presentation of, is that we're starving to see something of greater substance finished and shared at this point. I mean, this attraction was announced nearly 3 years ago. Some animatronics, a soundtrack clip, anything. Instead, it's been all talk about tiny backstory details and about Imagineering's many trips to New Orleans. But at this point I think the fandom at large is ready to start seeing or hearing something that's really going to make us say, "Wow, this is gonna be awesome!".
Think of it this way: no one would be complaining if Imagineering wanted to share fun, little backstories or the tales about how they picked out all the various knick-knacks strewn about the lobby and offices of the Tower of Terror (like the seemingly sudden end to two patrons game of cards). But they probably would be if this was all they had to share after 3 years, with no actual ground being broken on the future site of the hotel.
I don't think all of this extra detail will be on-ride things we have to think about. At least, I hope not. It's probably just a poorly managed news cycle. Again, I hope. I don't want them to forget to keep things fun and simple with this attraction. This doesn't have to be Star Wars where fans like myself obsess over having every little detail interconnected into a wider universe.
This should be simple fun, with good music and an easy to follow story. Like helping to find Louis' trumpet before the big Bayou Bash. Or searching for Tiana's missing ingredient. Not much else needs to be added. Aside from a few thrilling drops, of course.
They need something to talk about.
Chad Thundercaulk
Member
Uncle Remus was an invention of Joel Chandler Harris, however the stories that Uncle Remus told were directly compiled by Harris from the African-American oral storytelling tradition.
"While at Turnwold Plantation, Harris spent hundreds of hours in the slave quarters during time off. He was less self-conscious there and felt his humble background as an illegitimate, red-headed son of an Irish immigrant helped foster an intimate connection with the slaves. He absorbed the stories, language, and inflections of people like Uncle George Terrell, Old Harbert, and Aunt Crissy. The African-American animal tales they shared later became the foundation and inspiration for Harris's Uncle Remus tales. George Terrell and Old Harbert in particular became models for Uncle Remus, as well as role models for Harris."
TP2000
Well-Known Member
But isn't it funny to watch?!?
I think the Bud Light lady being so openly disdainful of her core customer base has been my favorite so far. And she went to Harvard to learn how to screw up Marketing 101 that badly??? She's truly an idiot.
But the Christine McCarthy quip about "Unfavorable Attendance Mix" was another good one.
I just don't understand how people that dense and that disconnected from their own products get into those jobs?!?
But at least it's fun to watch and laugh at them!
The Tales are appropriated from slaves. I studied the Tales in graduate school. Harris, more likely than not, made up some of the stories himself and didn’t get every exact detail from what was shared with him. He wrote them. He gets the credit for the Uncle Remus Tales. No matter how folks try and spin it, both PatF/TBA and SotS/Splash come from white people.
Again, folks should not be looking to Joel Chandler Harris as the source for the folklore.
Chad Thundercaulk
Member
Please tell me someone else who at the time brought the same amount of notoriety to these tales.
The brothers Grimm didn't write every tale, they compiled. Yes, Harris' compilation has his mark, however the underlying tales represent the stories that were told by those people much more accurately than a reworked Brothers Grimm fairytale.