Tiana’s Bayou Adventure to replace Disney’s controversial Splash Mountain ride
Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
The interior of the Splash Mountain ride is seen at Walt Disney World in Florida in August 2020.
The controversial Splash Mountain rides at Disneyland and Walt Disney World will reopen in 2024 with a “Princess and the Frog” theme that will replace the backstory based on the 1940s Disney film “Song of the South” criticized for perpetuating racist stereotypes.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure attractions will replace the Splash Mountain water rides at Disneyland and Florida’s Magic Kingdom in late 2024, according to Disney officials.
The new attraction name and opening date were announced by Disney officials on Friday at Preservation Hall in New Orleans during the Essence Festival of Culture.
Walt Disney Imagineering has traveled to Louisiana and New Orleans during research trips for the revamped ride to work with academics, musicians, chefs, local experts and cultural institutions.
“In many ways, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is a love letter to New Orleans,” Charita Carter, Imagineering executive producer of relevancy activations, said in a statement. “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.”
Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose, who voiced Princess Tiana in the movie, let the 2024 opening date slip out in early June during an appearance on “Live with Ryan and Kelly.”
“I’ve been involved in the beginning, just talking about how we want it to be, what we want it to do,” Rose said on the show. “But if I were to tell you anything else, I would be sucked into the ground and you’d never see me again.”
Disneyland and Disney World have not yet announced closing dates for the classic log flume rides on both coasts.
Further details about the twin makeovers of the Splash Mountain rides are expected to be revealed during an expo in September at the Anaheim Convention Center in California.
Disney announced in June 2020 the Splash Mountain log flume rides at Disneyland in Anaheim and the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida would be transformed by Walt Disney Imagineering with a new theme based on “The Princess and the Frog” animated movie.
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Disney’s iconic animated film “Beauty and the Beast” turned 30 Sept. 29. The milestone invites happy reflection of how evolved the Disney princess archetype has become—and, in some cases, how far it still has to go.
With more than 80 years of work to draw on, Stacker ranked every stand-alone movie released by Disney that features a princess character or is in the princess canon, from 1937's “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to 2019's “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”—a sequel to a modern spin-off revisionist take on the classic "Sleeping Beauty." Using data from IMDb user scores, with the number of votes breaking any ties, this list also includes the sequels, prequels, and spin-offs that came from the success of the originals.
Early princess stories like "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Cinderella," and "Sleeping Beauty" established a formula that later princess stories would reference and reject. Starting in 1937 with "Snow White," Disney's first feature-length animated film and a cultural phenomenon, the Mouse House has drawn on princesses in every era of its storied history. Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty joined Snow White to form a group of critically acclaimed, artistically stunning princess movies in the 1950s. Princesses contributed mightily to Disney's revival—"The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin," "Pocahontas," and "Mulan" helped fuel the studio's triumphant return to box office domination starting in 1989.
The 21st century saw the rise of the meta-princess, with 2007's "Enchanted," 2009's "The Princess and the Frog," and 2010's "Tangled" featuring heroines rejecting the traditional princess narrative and charting their lives with much more agency than those of past princesses, sometimes without a prince at all. The trend reached a pinnacle with 2013's "Frozen," which some say eschewed the princess narrative to enormous box office ends and became as much of a cultural force as the most successful princess movies of the past.
But those earlier princesses left such an indelible mark on the culture that Disney went back to the well with a series of live-action remakes, starting with 2015's "Cinderella," followed by "Beauty and the Beast," "Mulan," and, coming full circle, "Snow White" is also scheduled to receive the live-action treatment.
This ranking goes beyond what might be considered the animated and classic princess-sphere, and includes movies like “Into the Woods” and “The Princess Diaries,” which also feature royalty and are Disney creations, but are not Disney princesses in the traditional sense. On the flip side, Mulan is not a princess—she is not the daughter or a king, nor does she marry a prince—but is included in Disney's princess franchise, and is included on this list.
Keep reading to see where your favorite falls in the rankings.
You may also like: Can you answer these real 'Jeopardy!' questions about movies?
Walt Disney StudiosDisney’s iconic animated film “Beauty and the Beast” turned 30 Sept. 29. The milestone invites happy reflection of how evolved the Disney princess archetype has become—and, in some cases, how far it still has to go.
With more than 80 years of work to draw on, Stacker ranked every stand-alone movie released by Disney that features a princess character or is in the princess canon, from 1937's “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to 2019's “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”—a sequel to a modern spin-off revisionist take on the classic "Sleeping Beauty." Using data from IMDb user scores, with the number of votes breaking any ties, this list also includes the sequels, prequels, and spin-offs that came from the success of the originals.
Early princess stories like "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Cinderella," and "Sleeping Beauty" established a formula that later princess stories would reference and reject. Starting in 1937 with "Snow White," Disney's first feature-length animated film and a cultural phenomenon, the Mouse House has drawn on princesses in every era of its storied history. Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty joined Snow White to form a group of critically acclaimed, artistically stunning princess movies in the 1950s. Princesses contributed mightily to Disney's revival—"The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin," "Pocahontas," and "Mulan" helped fuel the studio's triumphant return to box office domination starting in 1989.
The 21st century saw the rise of the meta-princess, with 2007's "Enchanted," 2009's "The Princess and the Frog," and 2010's "Tangled" featuring heroines rejecting the traditional princess narrative and charting their lives with much more agency than those of past princesses, sometimes without a prince at all. The trend reached a pinnacle with 2013's "Frozen," which some say eschewed the princess narrative to enormous box office ends and became as much of a cultural force as the most successful princess movies of the past.
But those earlier princesses left such an indelible mark on the culture that Disney went back to the well with a series of live-action remakes, starting with 2015's "Cinderella," followed by "Beauty and the Beast," "Mulan," and, coming full circle, "Snow White" is also scheduled to receive the live-action treatment.
This ranking goes beyond what might be considered the animated and classic princess-sphere, and includes movies like “Into the Woods” and “The Princess Diaries,” which also feature royalty and are Disney creations, but are not Disney princesses in the traditional sense. On the flip side, Mulan is not a princess—she is not the daughter or a king, nor does she marry a prince—but is included in Disney's princess franchise, and is included on this list.
Keep reading to see where your favorite falls in the rankings.
You may also like: Can you answer these real 'Jeopardy!' questions about movies?
