Tiana’s Bayou Adventure looks better than Splash Mountain, see for yourself

Tiana’s Bayou Adventure has lastly changed Splash Mountain at Disney World. The Disney Parks YouTube account is celebrating the completion of this unprecedented transformation with a nearly 10-minute, 4K ride-through.

Our first impression? Holy moly, they really pulled this off!

The trip’s designers needed to stroll a tightrope whereas reimagining — by way of scale and recognition — one of many largest rides at Disney’s theme parks. They would wish to take care of (or enhance upon) Splash Mountain’s abundance of animatronic characters, representing the traditional method to Disney’s most iconic rides. However they’d even have to include fashionable know-how (extremely high-resolution screens, customized 3D animation) for Bayou Adventure to suit alongside the parks’ different new “E-ticket attractions,” like Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Mickey’s Runaway Railroad.

In a choice that may please probably the most nostalgic amongst us, the design staff favored the old-school method, stuffing the trip with an astonishing variety of animatronic characters. They used screens to complement the expertise, just like the powdered sugar on a scrumptious beignet.

As with Splash Mountain, the trip has a relaxed begin. On a log flume, the visitors take a leisurely tour of Tiana’s backyard and the close by bayou, earlier than accumulating animal instrumentalists to play a tune on the Disney Princess’s restaurant. First, the riders meet a zydeco band that includes possums, beavers, bears, and wolves. Then, the voodoo priestess Mama Odie shrinks the riders to the dimensions of a frog to allow them to tour a mini-version of the bayou and befriend some musically gifted bugs and amphibian pals.

The trip culminates, as promised by its premise, with a efficiency by Tiana at her restaurant, accompanied by her animal orchestra. By our depend, this humongous area options no fewer than 15 animatronics, a recreation of Tiana’s restaurant, and a wealth of high-res screens that includes extra characters from the movie, reimagined from 2D into 3D.

Picture: Walt Disney Animation Studios

Splash Mountain, primarily based on the 1946 movie Music of the South, opened in 1992, regardless of Disney having by no means launched the movie in america on house video as a consequence of its racist portrayal of life on a plantation within the Southern United States. In 2023, Scout Tafoya wrote about Disney’s lengthy historical past of making an attempt to change or erase the historical past of Music of the South, treating the movie like a cultural artifact that has turn out to be poisonous with altering sensibilities. “But even in its day,” Tafoya writes, “Music of the South was derided as racist pandering, and it confronted a nationwide try at a boycott.

In 2020, Disney Parks introduced Splash Mountain would get replaced by a trip impressed by 2009’s Princess and the Frog.

Tiana’s Bayou Adventure opens at Walt Disney World on June 28 and later this 12 months at Disneyland. Polygon shall be touring the trip forward of its opening, so go to later this month for first-hand impressions and interviews!