Two years after the initial announcement, The Walt Disney Company officially named The Princess and the Frog retheming of Splash Mountain as “Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.” Coming out of Disney’s appearance at the ESSENCE Festival of Culture™ presented by Coca-Cola® in New Orleans, we still don’t have a lot of detail, but key art does make it clear that the alligators currently in the mountain will have a place. Which is, after all, logical.
They made the announcement at the historic Preservation Hall, emphasizing that the attraction is meant to celebrate the joie de vivre of New Orleans. Unsaid but clear from The Princess and the Frog is that joie de vivre can often include an enchevêtrement avec la mort. Any good attraction that ends with a fall down a log flume — which we assume will still be there — has to have an element of menace. As Dr. Facilier appears regularly in New Orleans Square, at least at the Disneyland Resort, he’s got to have found a way back from the netherworld for this theme park sequel. I’d bet money on it if we see him at the Oogie Boogie Bash this year at Disney’s California Adventure
You can check out a video on D23.com hosted by Charita Carter, Disney’s Executive Producer of Relevancy Activations. It offers a brief insight into their research and influences in New Orleans. There’s not a lot — or really anything — on the plot of the attraction. On the panel, Carter describes it as, “…a love letter to New Orleans. Like the musical city that inspired this attraction, Tiana’s second act is about a community working in harmony to achieve something extraordinary. She reminds us of an immutable truth we can all relate to: ‘If you do your best each and every day, good things are sure to come your way.’ And that’s a melody we can all sing along to!”
The original Splash Mountain featured characters and situations from Song of the South, a film full of racist stereotypes and portrayals with which the company has an uneasy relationship. Though likely most guests who rode it have never seen actually the film, it’s time to redo the attraction with a storyline and a property that has more actual inclusiveness and purposefulness to it. Heck, I love that there’s an executive in charge of “relevancy activations.” My only concern is that “activations” makes them sound temporary.
No doubt we’ll get new state of the art animatronic figures of Tiana and Naveen (and hoping for Facilier), but the basic layout will likely still look familiar to fans of Splash Mountain. Many of those figures were repurposed from the late America Sings in Tomorrowland. I’d just guess we won’t see the fox, bear, or rabbit figures quite as often.
The concept art does have the silhouette of a guitar-playing bear. Could we be getting a Country Bears/Princess Tiana crossover? They could just happen to be on tour and have a gig in New Orleans…
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