Lookout, Harmonious. Get out of the way, Galactic Starcruiser. There’s a new champion of Disney Parks disgust and it’s name is Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. Despite what you might hear on some other sites or on Disney-approved media outlets, the backlash to the Splash Mountain replacement is here and it is gargantuan. In fact, I would say it’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen in my years of covering Disney World and Disneyland.
It’s likely Disney knew they were in very hot water. The company released a “POV” ride-thru on YouTube before any YouTubers and/or vloggers had an opportunity to “be the first”. That might have been an attempt to get ahead of negative press. It did not work.
The video has since been ratioed with dislikes and the comments on the video are even worse. With the video existing on YouTube — where the general public will watch it rather than just heavy-dosage Disney fans — the reaction has been overwhelmingly negative in a way that is unprecedented. Even finding a positive comment is difficult. We’ve currently estimated the ratio of positive-to-negative comments at something like 1-to-200. Yes, it’s that bad.
The official Tiana’s Bayou Adventure video from Disney Parks is badly ratioed with dislikes.
This has not stopped, however, defenders from attempting to sway public opinion in favor of Disney’s new ride.
Disney Scoops defends Tiana’s Bayou Adventure with comments disabled.
DSNY Defends Tiana’s Bayou Adventure
Meanwhile, it’s not just the public reception of the ride that might be going poorly. Despite the attraction being a “reskin” of Splash Mountain, somehow the downtime for the log flume during press and influencer previews has been atrocious. Repeatedly the attraction has had fire alarms going off and previews for the entire remainder of the day were cancelled on June 2nd. On June 3rd, those attempting to ride reported that the attraction was down for three hours at one point and eventually had to be fully evacuated again.
Meanwhile, those who did manage to get on the ride during the preview days thus far were met with “unexpected results”. When the ride wasn’t suffering from fire alarms, evacuations and downtime, the very expensive animatronics were already malfunctioning. In the following video, Theme Park Reviews discovered that the very first Louis animatronic already has his mouth not opening at all. Because these are brand-new animatronics just delivered from California, this really can’t be blamed on maintenance. These have apparently already arrived in a fragile state.
Thus it is that many are declaring this the worst ride redo in the history of Disney Parks, perhaps even eclipsing Journey into Imagination 2.0. Remember that Splash Mountain was the most-beloved attraction in the entire world when it was closed at both Disney World and Disneyland. This new attraction seems to somehow damaged Disney’s reputation in a way that we haven’t seen ever before. Just look at the scathing comments from the Disney Parks Official YouTube Channel:
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure Comments 1
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure Comments 2
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure Comments 3
Now the question becomes: will Disney do as they did with Harmonious and take the ride back down to do another very expensive attempt? It may ultimately come down to queue times. Splash Mountain was the most popular ride at the parks — if Tiana’s Bayou Adventure doesn’t draw similar attendance, it will almost certainly increase the wait times of all other attractions at the park. That’s a real problem when capacity is one of the biggest issues at the castle parks.
Though many may ride in the summer months just to get splashed, others may forego the opportunity by dashing themselves with a Dasani instead.
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So if I was in charge and I had to approve this ride, the first thing would be to base it off the movie. The lack of Dr Facilier definitely hurts the ride and it should not have been a “sequel” to the movie. The second would be to make it as festive as possible since it looks so lifeless looking and empty. The final thing would be to fix the drop as it looks bad here and make it like Splash Mountain’s drop where the audience felt like they were being shrunken. Oh and to put the ship on top of the ride like the concept art was supposed to be. I don’t think the retheme was a bad idea if they made the ride just as good, but when it’s lifeless and boring, that’s a problem for me.
If it were good, I’d give credit to where credit is due. Matt DH is just mad at us because we’re right. It is bland, a shame they didn’t use the movies story and now no one wins because we don’t have splash mountain.
Man, Matt DH is such a massive cuck.
Replace the music with Zippedy Do Dah and Laughing Place. It will already improve.