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

[SamusAranX]

Did you expect a person who spent almost every day at the MK documenting every single thing happening to have a different reaction ?

Gonna have to say this is a bit of flirting with a line here….Drew seems like good people and if he liked the attraction, more power to him.

 

[monothingie]

The up/down votes on youtube mean nothing more than certain factions are out in full force, directing their followers to these videos.

Or it's not and it's actually a relatively accurate metric of its popularity.

Anytime something is ratio'd on that scale it's way more than a bunch of angry basement dwellers.

Don't believe me, look at the ratios for Indy, Wish, The Marvels, etc. they were very much an accurate reflection of their respective subject matters popularity.

 

[JohnD]

It's straight up gaslighting at this point.

These two said exactly the same thing and in the same order. Just a few words vary here and there. What a coincidence!

 

[Trauma]

These two said exactly the same thing and in the same order. Just a few words vary here and there. What a coincidence!
View attachment 789231

I guess it cheaper to post fake reviews than to build a good ride.

Pathetic.

 

[JohnD]

This is what happens when tasks are given to the regulators rather than the creators. This attraction was not built to create an impressive story or an immersive environment, but simply to check a bunch of boxes and meet regulations set forth by the HR division, DEI division, and executive division. These departments are not designed to be creative, but simply to reel in and regulate the creativity of other departments. This is when we end up with bland, soulless junk like TBA, because it was created merely to check a list by uncreative people. I’m really starting to wonder how much control imagineering really had over this project, because it feels like a step down even when compared to other recent stateside attractions.

They say "Stories matter". Well, it doesn't appear that way from the attraction. So maybe imagineers had less input after all which could be a reason Baxter left.

 

[DCBaker]

 

[Trauma]

With so much time in the queue maybe they can figure out the story for us.

 

[Bill Cipher]

Thanks for the detailed review! Curious - have you watched the Disney POV video now? Do you agree with Drew's assessment that the video doesn't do the ride justice? (Even if your overall assessment obviously wasn't as positive.)

Yes, I’d definitely agree the video is not the best. Videos are never quite the same as an in person experience, especially regarding the lighting and direction of one’s eye, but there’s nothing particularly significant about the ride omitted from the video if that’s what you’re asking.

 

[Ayla]

No matter my feelings about the ride, this sucks for guests.

 

[Disney Analyst]

Alright, I have officially ridden the attraction and have a lot of thoughts. Not sure how novel any of this is because the page count of this thread jumped by 70+ pages since I ducked out to avoid spoilers so I apologize for retreading any ground.

Where to begin? Perhaps a goods vs bads to lay everything out and then some final thoughts. I would also like to state that I was coming into the ride with moderate expectations leaning positive and attempted to view the attraction on its own merits separate from its history as Splash Mountain (but then found that harder and harder to commit to).

The queue is nice and I quite enjoy the radio loop playing. The radio in particular gives a vibe that a tiny slice of New Orleans Square has come to WDW and does a good job at establishing Tiana as an important public figure. I absolutely love the lush greenery of the interior sets and dark lighting. The critter bands are very cute and add a great bit of liveliness to the spots they appear. The A1000s of Tiana and Louis are all a treat to see in full motion. Upon first hearing the rumors that there would be a shrinking/transformation portion to the ride I was highly skeptical it would be a good choice, but I think it turned out well and was a fun way to display the animatronic frogs much larger, as well as call back to the film. The primary thing to praise here is the finale scene and original song. The energy in that scene is great and really delivers the most complete part of the experience.

I generally don’t think the screens in this ride are too egregious or overbearing - they are actually quite minimal - but the shot of giant Tiana and Louis looking at the riders in the shrunken portion is the worst visual offender of the ride. It genuinely feels out of place and their dialogue could have been delivered with audio only to convey the same thing. As many have mentioned, there are quite a few empty stretches along the ride between characters. Not every ride has to be filled with animatronics to be good, and not every animated figure has to have complex motion to be effective at conveying what it needs to, but there is still a lot to be desired from the emptier scenes. The space between the 2nd band and the transformation dip drop is particularly empty, so much so that while on the ride you just instinctively look to watch the boat ahead of you complete the dialogue with Tiana right before the dip drop, only to immediately hear it again directed at your own boat. Though the A1000s are lovely, they are mainly used to just look at the ride vehicles and gesture at things. The finale is the only scene where it feels like the any A1000s are actually doing something within the narrative like dancing or playing music. Perhaps the greatest flaw of the ride though is that it lacks any poignant stakes, dramatic tension, or low beats. When designing a linear narrative experience a writer will typically create a graph laying out where the emotional high and low points of a story will be so they can fluctuate in a logical and satisfying manner. It feels to me that if you were to make something like that for this attraction it would be super flat and monotone with a lone spike at the finale. And while it’s true that not every attraction needs a well executed narrative or complex emotional arc to be really good, the issue lies in the nature of the attraction being a replacement.

I really tried to let this ride live on its own merits separate from Splash Mountain, but the positive elements of this ride come at the expense of another attraction, and they extract a heavy toll. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is by no means a bad attraction and far from the worst retheme in WDW, but it does not live up to the narrative, emotional stakes, and technical feats of its predecessor. It’s very much like Runaway Railway in that sense; it’s quite enjoyable and a decent ride on its own, but it should not have been a replacement in a park desperate for additional ride-through capacity. Even with the social issues surrounding Splash Mountain and Song of the South, there could have been tactful methods of updating the plot and concept with different characters to deliver the same strengths of the experience.

TL;DR: Don’t give in to the hysterics of people saying this is the worst attraction WDI has ever produced because it is a decent ride; but it does not evoke the spectacle of its predecessor, making it hard to enjoy for those that know what came before.

Do you think if they went back in and filled in some dead space, with more characters, it would improve things?

Is there a reasonable fix they could make in the coming years, to make the ride just a bit stronger?

 

[mightynine]

It's straight up gaslighting at this point.

Honestly, Twitter is so overrun with bots period, I doubt anyone needs to actually buy them these days.

At least they aren't saying TIANAINBIO.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

If we’re lucky the rides not broken, they’re just taking down banners and adding more static figures to flush out the scenes.

The story is going to be hard to fix but I think the ride itself could be easily improved, the biggest complaint is empty space, add some static characters tucked into the bayou, some huts, etc and that empty space doesn’t feel so empty anymore. Much of what made Splash so engaging was birdhouses, doors to character homes, etc, stuff that could easily be added to TBA.

 

[TheIceBaron]

Somewhat unrelated but Disney seems to be pivoting a bit on their media strategy lately. As the Star Wars show The Acolyte comes out tomorrow, the show runner and KK went on offense and knocked a part of fandom that engages in bad faith attacks on the show, characters, actors, etc. I am sure they are going to dismiss what they perceive as bad faith attacks on TBA. I just hope they aren’t going to gaslight themselves into thinking any criticism of TBA is in bad faith.

 

[V_L_Raptor]

One thing i've been wondering. I know A1000's are quite expensive. And they're clearly trying to move away from hydraulic and go all electric. But during the hydraulics era of AA's, they seemed to have a better variety for how complex the figures could get.

Mr Bluebird for example was probably the simplest true AA in Splash, as he was somewhat similar to the Tiki Birds in complexity. And yet he still had more dynamic audio-synced motion than the new critter figures (despite their larger size) that just pivot back and forth on a couple of axes in a very repetitive motion. Then you had figures like the squatting frogs which were a little step above him. And then above him were the minor critters such as the geese, chickens, alligators, etc used in the intro and finale scenes (with a lot more like these at Disneyland). And then lastly the main Brers who had a handful of figures that were the most complex in the ride.

With Tiana however, the moving characters seem to occupy two extremes. The 14 legitimate animatronics for the returning film characters are very intricate and complex. However, again all of the remaining critters are very simple moving props. Like the kinds you'd often see in old dark rides such as the old Dwarf cottage band from Snow White and 7DMT. And there's nothing really in between those two extremes. Pretty much all of these new critters should have been proper AA's. They shouldn't all need to have the insane range as an A1000, but something similar to Splash's geese, alligators and chickens would seem reasonable. Do they just not have any less expensive all-electric designs for these?

Moving props have their place as well. Splash also had plenty of those in addition to the 55ish genuine animatronics. These sorts of props are what they could have used to fill out all of the empty dead space people have noted. As yensidtlaw1969 suggested in his mockup with regular storks, spoonbills, turtles, frogs etc etc.

I think my question would be to what extent Disney has command of what they can deploy, or whether the mix is symptomatic of having to draw their cast of figures from outside contractors and vendors.

R&D outside of those extremes may be a consulting expense they don’t want to take on, depending on how reliant WDI is on external shops for the animatronic systems they have on show. (I’d be willing to bet those prop-style figures are from Garner Holt contracts. They’ve certainly made no secret of making such things for Disney parade floats…)

 

[Bill Cipher]

Do you think if they went back in and filled in some dead space, with more characters, it would improve things?

Is there a reasonable fix they could make in the coming years, to make the ride just a bit stronger?

Actually, yes! Personally, I would like to see more critters/unique set pieces in the stretch between the 1st and 2nd critter bands, the stretch between the the 2nd band and the dip drop, replace the screen of Tiana and Louis with more animatronics/limited motion figures of the frog band, and add a more dramatic lighting effect to the walls of the final lift hill. I think those changes would do a lot to make the scenes feel significantly fuller and make the ride pack a bigger punch. But, none of that would still change the fact that the ride really lacks tension or emotional variance.

Do I think any of that is likely to happen? Absolutely not.

 

[Brer Oswald]

I legitimately can't tell if the Twitter post is intentionally trying to be sarcastic or is earnest.

He’s a content creator. Content creators make more money off of new stuff than old. It doesn’t matter to him whether it’s actually good or not. The controversy only adds to the value since more people will look at it.

 

[EagleScout610]

Wanna know what's embarrassing? They showed off their brand new attraction and things aren't working. Off the pov posted by the site we do not name:

- Louis' mouth isn't moving in the first inside scene.
- PawPaw's hand isn't moving in the Rara band scene.
- Tiana in that same scene seems to have trouble moving her head and arms (Already pointed out)
- Tiana only talks right when the boat is at or almost past her (Both in the upper level)
- Mama Odie screens seem to have trouble syncing with boats arriving at the dip drop and final lift. I've seen a few cases where she either speaks too early or late
- A few lights are out in the finale leaving Timon the Otter in the dark.

Now, I'm not saying things can't break. They break, it happens. But it seems like these were kinks they should have ironed out before sending guests through.

 

[Midwest Elitist]

If we’re lucky the rides not broken, they’re just taking down banners and adding more static figures to flush out the scenes.

The story is going to be hard to fix but I think the ride itself could be easily improved, the biggest complaint is empty space, add some static characters tucked into the bayou, some huts, etc and that empty space doesn’t feel so empty anymore. Much of what made Splash so engaging was birdhouses, doors to character homes, etc, stuff that could easily be added to TBA.

The cohesiveness of the music is something that can't be fixed however. And this is an example of the main problem: at surface level, everything passes with a "meh". But the attention to detail has vanished.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

I could say more but my point is made. Their own website proves it.

Their website does not prove what you're suggesting it's proving.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Wanna know what's embarrassing? They showed off their brand new attraction and things aren't working. Off the pov posted by the site we do not name:

- Louis' mouth isn't moving in the first inside scene.
- PawPaw's hand isn't moving in the Rara band scene.
- Tiana in that same scene seems to have trouble moving her head and arms (Already pointed out)
- Tiana only talks right when the boat is at or almost past her (Both in the upper level)
- Mama Odie screens seem to have trouble syncing with boats arriving at the dip drop and final lift. I've seen a few cases where she either speaks too early or late
- A few lights are out in the finale leaving Timon the Otter in the dark.

Now, I'm not saying things can't break. They break, it happens. But it seems like these were kinks they should have ironed out before sending guests through.

…employees only at this point