Reviewing an attraction like Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is always an interesting experience. Some attractions are obviously excellent (Hagrid's Motorbike Adventure) and some are obviously sub-par (SeaWorld’s closed Antarctica came to mind first) but most are somewhere in between and their appeal is highly subjective. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, officially opening tomorrow at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, falls in the last category.
Before I give my review of the Magic Kingdom’s newest attraction, some caveats:
1) I was invited to experience Tiana’s Bayou Adventure at a media event earlier this month. I was Disney’s guest at the Contemporary Resort and at the park. I was able to experience it twice without a long line.
2) Throughout the ride’s development, I had been invited to events at Imagineering and in New Orleans to learn more about its creation. During those events, I had the opportunity to speak with the amazing Imagineers, artists and musicians who created it. Having done this job for nearly 25 years, it’s not possible to view an attraction with complete objectivity when you’ve seen some of the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into it and know how much it means to the creators. That said, I do believe my review here is my honest, objective opinion. But readers deserve to know the full story.
3) I loved Splash Mountain. I believe it is a top 5 all-time Disneyland / Walt Disney World attraction. I was very sad to see it go.
4) We rode three weeks before its official opening. It’s had lots of downtime during previews and as with all new attractions, I’m sure there are lots of small details to be worked out.
5) As I mentioned, I rode Tiana’s Bayou Adventure twice — but I walked through the queue three times. Unfortunately, the queue music, which is a part of the story, was not playing any of those times.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure
After winding your way through a lot of outdoor queue, you’ll enter the salt dome that serves as the headquarters of Tiana’s Foods, setting the stage for the story. Placed after the time of The Princess and the Frog, Tiana now owns a co-op where she is able to serve and work with her community. From prior events, I learned the radio show playing in the queue further sets up the story. Sadly, as mentioned above, it was not playing during my experience. That means I also didn’t get to hear the unique arrangements of the film’s songs created for the queue.
Inside the headquarters you’ll find family photos, awards, newspaper clippings, food storage, props, an office and a kitchen with beignets on the table. While not spectacular by modern queue standards, it is full of little details to keep you occupied while you wait. However, the queue remains a bit cramped and claustrophobic, especially with the need to split stand-by and Lightning Lane into two separate lines.
The ride vehicle is still four rows of two across with a lap bar. I am a very large guy (6’1″, 300 pounds). Sitting in a row by myself is easy. Sitting next to another person is a bit painful on the knees, but I do fit. Once seated, we were off. The ride layout is identical to Splash Mountain – multiple lifts and drops with a giant drop near the end. However, the story and scenery are very different.
The story here is you are joining Tiana and Louis the alligator as they search for a band to perform at a neighborhood soiree. I found the story pretty easy to follow, but not particularly compelling. It lacked the tension I’ve come to expect on a ride like this … but I’ll talk more about that later.
The animatronics and sets are the highlight of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. I don’t think anyone can accuse Disney of holding back in that area. The Tiana figures are very large and detailed, and Louis is enormous! The thing I kept thinking as I passed them was how larger than life they seemed. Very impressive! The sets were also large and detailed, particularly the finale after the drop. The Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah scene of Splash Mountain was iconic, but I think this scene surpassed it – Animatronics, great screen use and a new song, “Special Spice,” that plays much better on the ride than I thought it did when I heard it on its own.
Speaking of screens, this ride does have them, but it doesn’t overdo them. This is most definitely not a screen-based attraction, and the few places where they have been added add to the scene, but they’re never the focal point of the scene. The screen use is excellent!
If you’ve read other reviews, you’ll know a common complaint is the ride has dead spots where nothing is really happening. Honestly, while riding it, even with that knowledge in my head, I did not find that to be the case. There are spots where there are no figures as you transition from one scene to another, but my mind was always occupied with greenery and fireflies. It didn’t feel dead to me. However, what I did notice is how some scenes seem to be timed to trigger when the boat passes as opposed to being a scene on repeat as you glide by. I distinctly remember once coming upon a scene with Tiana where she’s more or less standing still doing nothing until our boat got much closer, then her scene triggered. It seemed noticeable and odd and took me out of the moment. Perhaps, this is related to how early we rode and will be rectified in the future (if it hasn't already).
All that said, as good as Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is — and it is very good — it is less than the sum of its parts. When I think about the individual elements, I marvel. They are spectacular. But putting it all together left me a little bit flat. I think that’s because of the story they chose. It simply lacks tension. You’re going to a party, you’re putting a band together, and when you go up that final hill and down the drop, it’s a little anticlimactic. Not physically (it’s the same drop as always) but emotionally. There’s no villain in the ride (despite the fact the movie has one of Disney’s better villains), no “something suddenly goes wrong” and no major dilemma you’re finally getting out of.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is a very pleasant ride punctuated by moments of thrill that don’t really fit. I don’t think there’s any question that, in a vacuum, if Disney wanted to build a ride based on Tiana, they would’ve made a family friendly attraction that everyone could ride. But having Splash Mountain as a starting point, I feel like they created that family friendly attraction shoe-horned into a thrill ride with a 40″ height requirement, and the combination — while very enjoyable — doesn’t quite work. If I were to just give grades to individual components of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, I’d probably give it an A. But putting it all together, I think the results are closer to a B.
Replacing the iconic Splash Mountain, which anchored Frontierland for over 30 years, meant Tiana’s Bayou Adventure has tough shoes to fill. It’s difficult to judge it on its own merit, but I’ve tried very hard to do that here. That said, it did replace a very popular ride, so I do think it’s fair to make a comparison to what it replaced. And while some elements of it I found far superior to Splash Mountain, on the whole, I don’t think it’s up to Splash’s level. Perhaps there was no way an attraction geared towards families could work with Splash Mountain’s layout, or perhaps, given that layout they should’ve gone with a more tension-filled story. I don’t know the solution, but I do know how it landed on me: a little flat.
BUT — all that said and with all those complaints in mind, the bottom line is that I think Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is a very good attraction. I would happily queue up for it on my next visit, I would (and have) recommended it to everyone who asks, I expect most guests to love it, and I really hope Disney has a winner here. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure deserves to be a popular addition at the Magic Kingdom, even if it’s not quite as good as it could be.