News Tiana's Bayou Adventure - latest details and construction progress

MagicHappens1971

MagicHappens1971

Well-Known Member
mickEblu said:
Can they afford to keep spending 100s of millions of dollars on movies (Lightyear, Strange World) and ride rethemes (Tiana, Pixar Pier, Mission Breakout) that lose money or don’t move the needle?
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Movies aside… there’s no evidence that Disney lost money on any of the aforementioned attractions. Mission Breakout was part of their larger (eventual plan) to build Avengers Campus. TBA will further the Disney Princess brand and sell more merch than the Brers did. Pixar Pier is debatable.
 
mickEblu

mickEblu

Well-Known Member
MagicHappens1971 said:
Movies aside… there’s no evidence that Disney lost money on any of the aforementioned attractions. Mission Breakout was part of their larger (eventual plan) to build Avengers Campus. TBA will further the Disney Princess brand and sell more merch than the Brers did. Pixar Pier is debatable.
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The attractions would go under the “don’t move the needle” label.
 
MagicHappens1971

MagicHappens1971

Well-Known Member
mickEblu said:
The attractions would go under the “don’t move the needle” label.
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I got that from your post… my point was that there’s no evidence that they didn’t “move the needle”. On the other side of the token, there’s no evidence they did as we have no access to Disneys internal books.
 
SuddenStorm

SuddenStorm

Well-Known Member
MerlinTheGoat said:
There aren't even any Brer characters on the boat. The point of this ride is to purge SOTS, pretty much nothing about the riverboat evokes that film or it's characters.
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While I agree with the point, the Riverboat in Anaheim was basically the only place in the park that actually mentions Song of the South.

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TheMaxRebo

TheMaxRebo

Well-Known Member
If they only reason they are removing the river boat is so people aren't reminded of Splash that is silly

People who remember Splash will remember it whether the river boat is there or not .... And over time new people will come and not remember Splash and seeing the river boat for them won't be a car connection to Splash, it will be part of the New Orleans theme/Tiana's Bayou Adventure
 
Brer Oswald

Brer Oswald

Well-Known Member
MerlinTheGoat said:
The initial budget I heard back when it was first announced was $30-$40 million. Which would be an automatic death sentence (the pathetic Frozen overlay of Maelstrom cost a lot more than that). I wasn't given an exact final amount approved, just that it was "extremely healthy" (though not some absurd number like Cosmic Rewind's $500 mil). I was told the budget gradually and substantially increased multiple times during development to the point where it has strongly impressed the person I spoke with. Which is why I would make sure the details you have are current.

The budget alongside a lot of other new details this source learned after D23 last year made them do a complete 180 on their opinion of the retheme. Like went from saying it would be one of their worst rides ever and embarrass Splash, to literally "this is insanely impressive and should be a huge hit, a worthy replacement for Splash".

The comment I was told about the America Sings figures seemed to imply they would be reusing a lot of them. Didn't seem like just 7 or 8. That would be disappointing if that's the extent of them. I don't expect the Brer characters to appear of course.

Have you heard a ballpark number for how many AA's the ride will have in its entirety? I wasn't given a specific numbers myself, but the impression I got was that it would at least compare favorably to the quantity that Splash has, possibly get an increase. Which would be crazy given that Splash already has well over 50 figures (Disneyland has an additional dozen or so over WDW). Like I said, the two pieces of art that Disney released later last year looked quite well populated compared to the scenes they're replacing.

I hope you're wrong about the finale, because that sounds insanely disappointing. That room in Splash was an exceptionally themed space with a ton of physical depth and detail. And the sheer quantity of AA's made it feel very alive and dense. Trading all of that for 20 fewer AA's (I don't care how "impressive" the remaining 6 are) and a flat wall projection is nauseous to think about.
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Budget honestly means very little in terms of quality. Ratatouille, Runaway Railway, Navi River, and Tron all had massive budgets. Cosmic Rewind has the highest reported budget of any Disney ride and, while a fun coaster, isn’t worth what they paid for it as far as show quality goes. For all we know, most of TBA’s budget could have been spent on the A1000 figures rather than the sets themselves and background cast of animatronics.

Also, he’s not wrong about the finale 😬. But you’ll see that soon enough.
 
MerlinTheGoat

MerlinTheGoat

Well-Known Member
The budget wasn't the only reason the retheme was touted as quality. But it would have been impossible to do anything decent with only $30-$40 million. A healthy budget is still a bare minimum necessity to even be able to create a decent ride in this modern era of Disney. It doesn't guarantee a good ride, but it at least allows an opportunity to create something good if the talent and motivation is there. I did not bring up the budget as the only reason to believe this ride would be decent, there were a number of other reasons provided.

Rat, Tron, Avatar and GOTG were new builds. While they still had no business costing as much as they did, it's understandable why they would require a lot more money than a retheme. Even Mickey, despite reusing an existing building, still had the entire ride system gutted and replaced with a new one. An expensive one.

Tiana is reusing the existing track and vehicles. It should have a much more targeted budget that can be better allocated to the show scenes. I also expect the show scenes to be vastly better than any of the above mentioned rides. Or Frozen for that matter (which you could tell was going to be poor even from the art).

The standard to beat however is the ride it's replacing. Even if it turns out to have the best quality scenes in any of Disney's American rides from the past 30 years, it still has to face up against Splash Mountain. I'm much more skeptical about this than the source I spoke with, who was/is again extremely confident they're going to pull it off.
 
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Brer Oswald

Brer Oswald

Well-Known Member
The Splash show scenes were vastly better than the attractions I listed, so if TBA reuses them, it’ll be better by default. If they demo/scrap most of them, all bets are off.
 
MerlinTheGoat

MerlinTheGoat

Well-Known Member
Brer Oswald said:
The Splash show scenes were vastly better than the attractions I listed, so if TBA reuses them, it’ll be better by default. If they demo/scrap most of them, all bets are off.
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I'm well aware of that. But as I said, a lot of the budget here is likely going to target the show scenes and figures. There's no new building or expensive new ride system to deal with. Even most of the exterior rockwork is being kept with some new paint/foliage. I'm a lot less worried about where the budget is going on this project than something like Cosmic Rewind, Rat or even Mickey. Whether it ends up trading blows with Splash's scenes, I don't know. I've been told it should, but it's hard to imagine they can pull something like that off. I do expect Tiana's scenes to at least be immensely more physically detailed and well populated than Rat, Mickey, GOTG etc.

I'm guessing they won't be reusing most of the Splash sets at WDW. Unlike Disneyland's, our version doesn't take place in a bayou. I'd also venture a guess that they're going to give DL's sets an overhaul as well since they were never as detailed as ours either (though DL has a larger quantity of AA's than the others). Though we'll see, you can actually do a lot to drastically change the appearance of a scene by keeping a lot of the more solid objects and just altering minor things such as lighting, paint and foliage. But my guess is still a more extensive replacement to the scenery. The America Sings figures i'm still puzzling over. I was told last year that most/all of them would be reused for Tiana. Whereas SplashArchive is saying only about 7-8 will be reused.

Tiana's art released so far appears promising, there's lot of detail in the scenery and seemingly a large quantity of animatronic figures (an increase over Splash in those specific scenes if accurate). Granted, concept art isn't always accurate to the final product, but it's generally the early blue sky type attractions (like Cosmic Rewind, Slinky Dog and 7DMT) that exhibit some of the more drastic alterations in the final product. Frozenstrom's art was created based on a finalized plan close to when construction began, and it showcased a bland empty flat scene with a single AA and flat wall projections, pretty much spot to what we got. They've shown off several pieces of interior artwork for Tiana since July last year, and it looks a lot more impressive than Frozen, with seemingly dense lush scenery and plenty of animatronics (an increase over Splash if accurate). I expect them to be somewhat accurate and likely based on pretty much finalized plans given when they were created and released.
 
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MerlinTheGoat

MerlinTheGoat

Well-Known Member
Nland316 said:
Something similar like to this Thomas Kinkade piece — with more characters and Tiana’s Palace in the background instead — would have been perfect for the finale scene..

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I do love this piece of art, in spite of weirdly having both human and frog forms of Tiana and Naveen present. And yeah, it would have been perfect to adapt the finale into something similar.
 

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