Tiana’s Bayou Journey has lastly changed Splash Mountain at Disney World. The Disney Parks YouTube account is celebrating the completion of this unprecedented transformation with an almost 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 greatest rides at Disney’s theme parks. They would want 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 trendy expertise (extremely high-resolution screens, customized 3D animation) for Bayou Journey to suit alongside the parks’ different new “E-ticket points of interest,” like Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Mickey’s Runaway Railroad.
In a call that can please probably the most nostalgic amongst us, the design workforce 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.
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Picture: Disney
As with Splash Mountain, the trip has a relaxed begin. On a log flume, the friends take a leisurely tour of Tiana’s backyard and the close by bayou, earlier than amassing 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 associates.
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 further characters from the movie, reimagined from 2D into 3D.
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Picture: Walt Disney Animation Studios
Splash Mountain, based mostly on the 1946 movie Tune of the South, opened in 1992, regardless of Disney having by no means launched the movie in america on house video resulting from 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 Tune of the South, treating the movie like a cultural artifact that has develop into poisonous with altering sensibilities. “However even in its day,” Tafoya writes, “Tune 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 Journey 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!