When the POV started I was actually excited. The beginning scenes outside were pretty cute and had dancing plants and stuff, and as a Tomboy I do love Tiana being all explorery, but once they got into the show building and I saw bland home depot fake plants where the first fisherman Goose was I was like "Oh.....we're doing this aren't we...."
There was a lot of darkness which I thought was something everyone complained about in Dinosaur so......why is this still happening? There were some nice animatronics and the music was nice, the bayou song fits well with flickering lamps and stuff, but some of the AAs look like they've been there since 1971, and were planned for Western River Expedition but were left in a storage building for all those years and the fur is dusty and cob webbed.
There was a long stream of animatronics that were now reduced to cobbles of 3 or 4 then blankness, and they removed the possums????? WHAT??!!! They were in the concept art!! What was wrong with possums being in a bayou? Then more darkness and Tiana saying something and a cheap screen of Mama Ode replacing where brer rabbit taunted his nemesis' before the ride fell into the more dangerous territory of the laughin' place. Here we have the shrinking scene which makes NO sense and is poorly executed into what I THOUGHT would be the salt mines but it seems more like a hollow gopher hole where someone lost a bottle and some keys. Then NOTHING! The entire laughing place scene looks like a stage on It's a small world when the dolls are taken out for repair. Seeing a loose cable lying around between the mushrooms would not look out of place to me.
Then we have Mama Ode AS I PREDICTED, THROWING YOU OVER THE FALLS FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER! Making her the DE-FACTO villain of this ride. Even more so I think I heard Tiana question where we went so this was done behind her back anyway. I really don't trust that lady.
I don't really have much issues with the finale, aside from the forgettable and indecipherable song that is nowhere near Zip a dee Do Dah Quality. I can't believe they managed to make the song from Runaway Railway more catchy.
This leads me to my MAJOR concern here....
If this version was this disappointing imagine the CALIFORNIA VERSION! The boats move much faster, the lighting is much less dynamic, the scenes are arranged much longer and there were WAY more animatronics to fill it up. This means that ride is shaping up to look like a B-rated version of this one at best. I bet they will just use the same soundtrack instead of keeping it unique like it was on Splash, It will be very incoherent, My beloved hitchiking alligator will be replaced by a plant, and NO MORE CUTE GIGGLING BRER RABBIT HIDING!!!!! :O That was my fave animatronic ever!
