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

[LittleBuford]

There are two separate things going on here.

1. The crown's presence on the tower.

2. The crown's style.

Neither of these things conjures up the 1920s. The first is just an idiosyncrasy cooked up (excuse the pun) for the retheme, while the second is indistinct enough that it doesn't point to any specific period. There are definitely reasons to dislike the crown, but "It looks too 1920s" isn't one of them.

 

[Epcot81Fan]

Just like rafts and whatnot from Tom Sawyer would have been constructed in the 1830s and the structures on Big Thunder are stated to have been built late- to post-Gold Rush? I just don’t really understand the obsession with the date on which things were canonically constructed in a land that has never been too fussed with such things in the first place. You have always been able to look out across the Rivers of America and see a wide variety of different time periods represented.

I’m sorry, did you think Frontierland was a historical facsimile and not a whimsical interpretation?

Hey, I think the giant tiara will look perfect in Fantasyland!

Oh wait, I meant the giant tiara will look perfect with all of the other giant cartoon princess themeing throughout Frontierland and New Orleans Square on both coasts!

Well done, WDI!

 

[James Alucobond]

Hey, I think the giant tiara will look perfect in Fantasyland!

Oh wait, I meant the giant tiara will look perfect with all of the other giant cartoon princess themeing throughout Frontierland and New Orleans Square on both coasts!

Well done, WDI!

I thought this was about people thinking it looked as if it were from another time period, not about whether or not they liked it. It’s not like it’s blatantly art deco or modern.

 

[Incomudro]

Remind me, in what year is this attraction supposed to take place?

Yeah, this looks like today's multi-cultural art.
Would we see art like this in New Orleans' in the 1920's?

 

[Ghost93]

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. This is not the first time I’ve criticised aspects of the retheme. I am generally for the project but have disliked a number of decisions they’ve announced thus far and am keeping an entirely open mind for the final result (including the possibility that I may hate it).

I'm in the same boat. I think The Princess and the Frog was the best property to use for a Splash Mountain retheme, but I have reservations on the way they are handling the change. Right now, I'd have preferred them to have made a ride based more on the story of the film with Dr. Facillier being a major component instead of the whole Tiana's Foods Co-op concept. But I'll wait till I go on the ride before saying the Tiana's Foods idea is a mistake.

 

[Disney Analyst]

No fantasy elements ALLOWED I say. No cartoonish looking briar patches, no metal tiaras, nothing! Hyperrealism ONLY or else all is a bust. If this tiara stands, the "Magic" Kingdom is ruined, and the world ends tomorrow.

 

[celluloid]

Just like rafts and whatnot from Tom Sawyer would have been constructed in the 1830s and the structures on Big Thunder are stated to have been built late- to post-Gold Rush? I just don’t really understand the obsession with the date on which things were canonically constructed in a land that has never been too fussed with such things in the first place. You have always been able to look out across the Rivers of America and see a wide variety of different time periods represented.

I’m sorry, did you think Frontierland was a historical facsimile and not a whimsical interpretation?

Whimsy is putting Star Tours in Tomorrowland and because it has the buck Rogers serial analogue style of the future people like to imagine with space travel adventure even though it is always a long time ago.

1927 post WW1 with gold rush and Mark Twain's fable on the 1800s...is lazy.

If you are fine with it that is fine. But you got called out wrong on your attempts to bend the reality and asked me to provide how I know the crown is post 1920s. You completely went to attack my capabilities to see frontierland as any whimsy.

 

[EagleScout610]

I think we are missing a key story point that helps make sense of this.

Peter Quill visited New Orleans as a child...

And ate at Tiana’s Palace thus confirming her a place in the MCU with her own movie and spinoff Disney + Show

 

[Epcot81Fan]

I thought this was about people thinking it looked as if it were from another time period, not about whether or not they liked it. It’s not like it’s blatantly art deco or modern.

Heck, let’s put a giant tiara on Spaceship Earth!

It can be Fantasyland everywhere!!!

I mean, who doesn’t like “whimsy”?! Or something!

 

[Disney Analyst]

Heck, let’s put a giant tiara on Spaceship Earth!

It can be Fantasyland everywhere!!!

They already tried it at Epcot, but it was a lot more garish and in your face then a small (in comparison) tiara on a water tower, for a ride following the adventures of a *checks notes* princess.

 

[celluloid]

Mickey Mouse can appear in the queue as the ride takes places years after he is world known and Walt was on the rise and we can have Posters referencing the war to end all wars of WW1.
What a Frontierland feeling of an E ticket.

Seriously, if you are fine with it you are fine. But don't bend reality and try to sound like an art critic saying the crown is not supposed to represent the 20s when there is evidence by Disney that it is exactly meant to do that. It's reaching for some justification to make one feel better. Just own it and say you don't mind it and bring up other inconsistencies.
If mentioning when songs in CBJ were written or something helps you feel like 1927 are fine, so be it.
But construction topic wise, the 1927 water tower Tiana is exactly what they were going for and even created a faux photograph with a crane in it and a marketed date.

The mural is further evidence that Disney does not care about the mural.
If you are fine with the whimsy and Disney not caring as they are creating the near 1930s in Frontierland than do not be so quick to think the art mural does not fit in as it is too 1920s as it is just the same thing. Disney does not care. It's a mural of decor to them.
Declining by degrees.

 

[James Alucobond]

Whimsy is putting Star Tours in Tomorrowland and because it has the buck Rogers serial analogue style of the future people like to imagine with space travel adventure even though it is always a long time ago.

1927 post WW1 with gold rush and Mark Twain's fable on the 1800s...is lazy.

If you are fine with it that is fine. But you got called out wrong on your attempts to bend the reality and asked me to provide how I know the crown is post 1920s. You completely went to attack my capabilities to see frontierland as any whimsy.

My comment with regard to the whimsical nature of the land was not in response to you and was not meant as an attack even against the person to whom it was directed.

That said, I am not sure how any of what I stated bent reality? No one disagrees that the crown is canonically placed in 1927 or that the back of the water tower has that date. I thought the discussion we were having was about the style of the tiara, which, as I said, is neither art deco nor modern, which would mean that it is not especially aesthetically indicative of anything at all to do with the time in which it was placed.

 

[LittleBuford]

But construction topic wise, the 1927 water tower Tiana is exactly what they were going for and even created a faux photograph with a crane in it and a marketed date.

I don't think you've understood what I'm saying. Yes, the backstory tells us that the water tower was adapted and provided with a crown in 1927. The crown itself, however, does not evoke that time period. Again, this doesn't mean I am endorsing or excusing the crown.

 

[JoeCamel]

I don't think you've understood what I'm saying. Yes, the backstory tells us that the water tower was adapted and provided with a crown in 1927. The crown itself, however, does not evoke that time period. Again, this doesn't mean I am endorsing or excusing the crown.

Maybe it was an antique crown gifted to Tiana by a grateful patron?

 

[celluloid]

Yeah, this looks like today's multi-cultural art.
Would we see art like this in New Orleans' in the 1920's?

There is probably some truth to this. It is meant to I am sure by an Instagram-able thing as people approach the courtyard to the ride repainted entrance. The kind of thing that is easy to sell when you don't have much substance.

 

[Casper Gutman]

We've heard several sources saying there will be a lot of animatronics. And not just from me or their PR statements. I'm confident it'll have far more than the likes of Rise of the Resistance, Frozen or even Tokyo's Beauty and the Beast.

However, by what standard is "a lot"? Beauty and the Beast has about 17-18 proper AA's. Frozen has 15. That's actually considered "a lot" by modern Disney standards, when more often you'll see numbers in the low single digits. Splash at WDW however had approximately 55+ proper AA's. And Splash at Disneyland had 76-78.

So in the context of Tiana, are they aiming for Splash Mountain quantities, Frozen/BATB or something in between? The PR statement said "dozens". So i'll assume it'll have at least 24, which is relatively more than anything else they've built in the past few decades. Another person on this forum a while back said it would have have "over four dozen" new animatronics, around half of which would be state of the art. That's much higher at 48 figures, quite a lot by modern standards. Though still perhaps still not quite as many as WDW's Splash, and a lot less than DL's Splash.

There's also a rumor, stated by two different people, that the Riverboat finale would be gutted and replaced by a projection mapped facade of Tiana's Palace restaurant. With all of the old animatronics being scrapped. One of the two people said that this scene would only have 6 animatronics, a reduction from the 26 that Disneyland's Splash has or the 18 that WDW has. That's kind of a devastating loss if true. This source has yet to release the renders they said they were going to upload. Though given that this claim has been reiterated by another seemingly separate individual a while back, there's a decent chance it's true. Disappointing if so.

This really is the key. I say I want AAs, but it’s more complicated than that. Avatar, Frozen - they have AAs and remain immensely underwhelming. What I, and I think many fans, really want are well-made AA SCENES. This what is lacking in those rides and it’s why even Resistance feels less impressive then it should. Disney has seemingly lost the ability to make the kind of large, deep AA scenes that defined Pirates, Splash, or the EPCOT classics. Instead, they’ve shifted thier attention to one or two very advanced, very impressive figures in a barren environment. But that misses the whole point of an AA scene, which should be packed full of details and gags. In fact, advanced AAs are nice but largely unnecessary - with the right art and set design, a bunch of quite basic figures can be far more satisfying than Kylo vaguely gesticulating. Imagine how much more enjoyable the AT-AT battle in Resistance would be with lots of stormtroopers and resistance fighters, each with character in their design and basic movements - and with a set design that drew guests eyes to key figures. The current paradigm of one flailing figure isn’t much more satisfying then screenzzzz.

 

[James Alucobond]

This really is the key. I say I want AAs, but it’s more complicated than that. Avatar, Frozen - they have AAs and remain immensely underwhelming. What I, and I think many fans, really want are well-made AA SCENES. This what is lacking in those rides and it’s why even Resistance feels less impressive then it should. Disney has seemingly lost the ability to make the kind of large, deep AA scenes that defined Pirates, Splash, or the EPCOT classics. Instead, they’ve shifted thier attention to one or two very advanced, very impressive figures in a barren environment. But that misses the whole point of an AA scene, which should be packed full of details and gags. In fact, advanced AAs are nice but largely unnecessary - with the right art and set design, a bunch of quite basic figures can be far more satisfying than Kylo vaguely gesticulating. Imagine how much more enjoyable the AT-AT battle in Resistance would be with lots of stormtroopers and resistance fighters, each with character in their design and basic movements - and with a set design that drew guests eyes to key figures. The current paradigm of one flailing figure isn’t much more satisfying then screenzzzz.

I think you're right in that more activity is more enjoyable, but apart from the well-articulated example you gave of Rise and the obvious case of Na'vi River Journey, part of the problem is that the stories they're telling don't support a ton of figures engaged in ambient interactions anymore. They're so focused on the specific narratives of their films being exactly what guests want to see that they try to replicate the intimacy of film within the rides, which results in fewer, more complex animatronics. As barren as Frozen Ever After feels, the number of figures they have is probably right for the task at hand; the question is whether or not that's the right design for a ride.

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

Not counting the story, Frozen has three major issues. One is that the face projected AA's suck. The second is that the scenery itself is very bland and sparse. Lots of flat walls with little to not detail. The third is that it's short, it did not fix the one singular issue that Maelstrom had AND the first two issues actually made it a downgrade from Maelstrom. I'm curious to see how Tokyo's entirely different version turns out. I don't really expect an insane AA population, but hopefully the sets and length are much better at least.

Navi has gorgeous and richly detailed sets, and I do like and respect the effort. But again only one single animatronic at the very end and criminally short. It needed to be at least 2x longer to be acceptable, 3x if you wanted something worthy of Disneyland's POTC.

Rise of the Resistance has plenty of scenery detail, but it's almost like the place has been abandoned with how few people and droids are present. Heck, there aren't even very many projections of characters, let alone AA's. I'll also mention that while the sets are "well done" in terms of being very visually accurate to the films, I personally don't find the interior of an imperial vessel to be an interesting environment to explore in the context of a theme park ride. As much flack as the prequels get, i'd much rather be visiting their visually interesting fantastical alien worlds than a bunch of flat metal and plastic hallways.

Beauty and the Beast has similar issues to Rise. Though it's arguably a bit less of a problem given the relatively more quiet and desolate nature of Beast's castle. One of the most glaring issue with BATB is the poorly executed afterthought of a mob scene. It's better than the Ursula silhouette at least, but it still gives off a similar vibe. BATB does have some very pretty scenery, though again like with Rise it seems like modern imagineers have issues with managing tight spaces. Much of the scenery and sparse animatronics are shoved up against the walls to make way for the huge vehicles. Making the rooms feel fairly empty and "flat" for lack of a better word. They also wasted a lot of space in the finale that could have gone to some additional AA's, such as Belle's father...

I've considered that the trackless vehicles might be hogging too much space, leaving scarce little room for anything else. But on the other hand, you've got much older predecessors with even larger vehicles such as Great Movie Ride and Universe of Energy, and they certainly didn't skimp on large 3-dimensional detailed sets and tons of AA's. So I really just have to assume the imagineers have been ordered not to create scenery like that anymore, don't want to, or can't. Perhaps a mix of all three. Tirian has said that the art of forced perspective is a dying art at imagineering, and I definitely see what he means.

 

[Sir_Cliff]

You edited this after my initial reply. This is actually my biggest issue with the mural: it doesn’t look like it comes from the animated world of the film at all. It looks decidedly like it’s trying to imitate a real-world mural associated with the 1920s jazz scene.

I feel very much the same way and it makes me a little concerned about the ride as it gives the sense that the creative team behind it are so wrapped up in the importance of the ride in terms of representation that theming is taking a backseat.

Overall, I'm happy that the ride is a positive step in terms of representation and I don't share the cynicism of many about the creative team actually spending time in New Orleans and seeking inspiration from local artists and others. The mural itself also seems fine on its own merits and may have decent talent behind it. That said, I would hope all of this research and talent would be placed in the service of creating a compelling themed experience that at least competes with what it's replacing. If it comes across as a statement (as my favourite example of the Main Street USA Confectionary Store backstories does), then I think it will fall short of what they're hoping it will represent.

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

I feel very much the same way and it makes me a little concerned about the ride as it gives the sense that the creative team behind it are so wrapped up in the importance of the ride in terms of representation that theming is taking a backseat.

Overall, I'm happy that the ride is a positive step in terms of representation and I don't share the cynicism of many about the creative team actually spending time in New Orleans and seeking inspiration from local artists and others. The mural itself also seems fine on its own merits and may have decent talent behind it. That said, I would hope all of this research and talent would be placed in the service of creating a compelling themed experience that at least competes with what it's replacing. If it comes across as a statement (as my favourite example of the Main Street USA Confectionary Store backstories does), then I think it will fall short of what they're hoping it will represent.

The big red flag for me is the sparse information on the actual ride itself. The interior show scenes have always been the real meat and potatoes of the experience that separates it from the vast majority of other log flumes. And we know so absurdly little about this. I don't know if it's because they want to keep it a surprise, or if there are quality concerns causing them to withhold information. Either way, the marketing has been bizarre and terrible, actually turning off a lot more people than had they just kept quiet until opening.

They need to start showing off actual ride content that people actually want to hear about. Stop the endless travel vlogs of the team visiting New Orleans and self aggrandizing over how incredible and talented they are. Or the never ending flood of backstory details that probably (hopefully) won't even be a factor for like 99% of the ride.