This summer, everything new at Walt Disney World and Disneyland will include the long awaited opening of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. With everything we know about the Princess and the Frog attraction seeming to have originated from an alleged push to move away from the racially charged history of Splash Mountain's source material, a new interview has apparently debunked that claim.
According to one of the Imagineers behind this new adventure, the plans for Tiana’s grander spot in the park ecosystem started a significant amount of time before that supposed catalyst. As you’ll remember, back in 2020 the public outcry to re-theme Splash Mountain seemed to have been the reason for the famed Disney Parks attraction to be rethemed into a new experience based on The Princess and The Frog.
However, a Blog Mickey interview with Carmen Smith from Walt Disney Imagineering set the record straight; with the SVP of Creative Development – Content, Product & Inclusive Strategies describing the genesis of it all as follows:
We worked on the story probably starting in 2018, and a lot of things happened in our world. Leadership said ‘Carmen, you’ve got a bucket of projects that you’re working on, what do you have that you want to showcase for us?’ And Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was one of them, and [leadership] said yes. And again, no one at WDI, Walt Disney Imagineering, works alone – we are an incredible team…
One could see why it seemed that Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was a direct reaction to the backlash to Splash Mountain. Roughly two weeks after that petition gained steam, Disney Parks’ 2020 announcement stated that this huge retheming was going to take place. So naturally, it seemed that the people had both spoken and been heard in rapid succession - leading to Splash Mountain's summer 2023 closure, which saw massive lines to send the ride off into theme park history.
Though looking back, a longer lead time could have been more apparent. The sort of concept art that came along for this beautiful future doesn’t feel like something that would have reasonably been put together in such a short period. To be fair, it was the early days of the pandemic, so it's not like anyone was really keeping a close track on time's passage.
That very subject does seem to be rather fluid, as it was recently announced that Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is opening earlier than we’d assumed. With Walt Disney World’s variant of this spectacle set to open this summer, and presumably later this year in Disneyland, it won’t be long before we’ll be treated to some new excitement in The Princess and The Frog’s world on both coasts.
In the meantime, it’s a really good time to celebrate the impending 15th anniversary of this hand-drawn beauty of 2009. So if you’re inclined to get acquainted with friends on both this and the other side of your Disney+ subscription, The Princess and the Frog is waiting for those of you who are getting a little impatient about how long “almost there” seems to have stretched.
