WDW Pro’s reporting on Splash Mountain is now essentially confirmed. It’s time to explain why Disney is holding the attraction longer than others expected.
It has been fun watching the Disney news bloggers and sites carry the info today that Splash Mountain is getting the refurbishment for a 2024 reopening with the new Princess and the Frog overlay. I suppose it is news considering it had never been confirmed until today when the actress playing Tiana made the declaration ahead of Disney’s PR team being ready.
'The Princess and the Frog' actress Anika Noni Rose says she's working with Disney on the Splash Mountain re-theme and that it will open in 2024. https://t.co/zqjerWvlGX
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) June 2, 2022
But that said, if you’ve been reading That Park Place for the last few months, you’ll notice this “huge news” is actually something we’ve reported six or seven months ago. From last December:
Various sources over the past 48 hours have told me that “higher ups” have decided to hold off on Splash Mountain changes. The ride which is based on African American slave folklore, connected with Disney’s controversial Song of the South film, was to be transformed into a Tiana overlay. But with Splash Mountain being one of the most popular rides on either coast, and especially popular at Florida’s Magic Kingdom, the fear that poorly performed Imagineers might inadvertently tank the popularity of an attraction may have Disney rethinking much of the prior plan. Is that to say that they won’t go through with the changes at all? No. But it is to say that I’m now hearing that Splash Mountain will not see major changes until a 2024-25 window.” — WDW Pro
At the time, that was quite the claim to make considering this is a change that was announced all the way back in 2020. And, just as I had talked about all the way back then, part of this delay is simply because there was nothing more than blue sky documents ready to go when Disney made the Splash Mountain change announcement during the Black Lives Matters protests / riots. The other delay has more to do with calculated marketing strategy on the part of The Walt Disney Company. They have Cosmic Rewind to drive marketing for the parks for the next year. They have Tron being slow-walked to completion for a 2023 ad campaign. So why would they push Splash Mountain sooner? They’re certainly not taking that ride down until Tron is finished. Did you seriously think this was a high priority for the company in order to rectify some sort of social injustice? No — they’re waiting on it until they can maximize profit off of using it as a driving reason to come to the parks.
Do I think that it will actually be a major reason to come to Magic Kingdom? No. In fact, I think there’s a serious risk to redoing a highly successful E-Ticket attraction, particularly when that attraction has been a top-five beloved attraction for decades. We haven’t seen anything like that since Journey Into Imagination was redone and it has been a decades-long travesty instead of a success. That doesn’t mean Splash Mountain will be a failure, but it does mean there’s a serious danger in this plan. It’s especially dangerous when Tokyo will have their original version to rub in our faces if the Tiana takeover isn’t up to par.
Even 2024 is not a given, however. Disney may really make you wait by holding off all the way until 2025. And even then, there’s no guarantee the two coasts will get simultaneous openings the way Mrs. Rose must have thought:
Disney Refuses to Confirm 2024 Opening of ‘The Princess and the Frog’ Retheme of Splash Mountainhttps://t.co/OsDur5IBLb
— WDW News Today (@WDWNT) June 2, 2022
And why in the world would a social justice alteration to an attraction wait five years from announcement until fruition? Well, Bre’r Rabbit may be hopping all that time because of a little thing called Epic Universe. Disney World has absolutely nothing to counter Universal Studio’s new theme park opening in 2025, so the best they can possibly hope for is that Splash Mountain will be a huge success… and they can open it in the same window as when the Super Mario Bros come to Orlando.
Is it a good plan? No. But every single trajectory you can measure for Disney is in the wrong direction, so good decisions are hard to come by lately. The better plan would have always been to simply add a new, awesome Princess and the Frog attraction to Magic Kingdom. Instead, we’re rolling the dice with hundreds of millions of dollars without even a smidgen of increased capacity in the cards.
For all the latest news that should be fun, keep reading That Park Place. As always, drop a comment down below!
