See who traveled to Disney World from New Orleans to ride Tiana's Bayou Adventure on VIP day (2024)

ORLANDO, Florida— Walt Disney World officials made a splash Monday, in more ways than one.

Two and a half weeks before its scheduled June 28 public opening at Disney’s Magic Kingdom theme park in Florida, media representatives and invited VIPs were treated to a sneak preview of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, its long-awaited, New Orleans-inspired retheming of the Splash Mountain log flume ride.

Combining bayou magic and pixie dust, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure in one fell swoop washes away an iconic but racially problematic attraction; celebrates Disney’s first Black princess, who made her debut in the 2009 animated musical fairy tale “The Princess and the Frog”; and delivers a heartfelt, many-splendored love letter to New Orleans.

“It is an honor and a blessing. This would not be possible if not for Leah Chase,” said Carmen Smith, of Walt Disney Imagineering, name-checking the New Orleans culinary icon who served as the real-life inspiration for Princess Tiana. “She was a dreamer and a doer and a working mom who followed her dream to run a restaurant.”

Chase died in 2019, but her legacy was alive and well at Monday’s sneak preview, with some 55 members of the Chase family — including several who served as creative consultants for the ride — among those invited to be the first to experience the finished product.

In fact, it felt at times as if half of New Orleans had migrated south to Orlando for the event.

In addition to the Chases and a smattering of local media representatives,Grammy Award-winning musician Terence Blanchard, who helped produce an ersatz radio show to play during the ride queue, was there.

Saints legends Drew Brees and Cam Jordan added luster to the day when they jumped on the new ride. The pair posted a video of their ride, and their reactions, online.

Grammy winner P.J. Morton, who penned “Special Spice,” a joy-fueled tune for the ride’s big finale, was joined earlier in the day by Anika Noni Rose, the voice of Tiana, for a rousing performance of the new song during a presentation on the ride’s development.

Later, Tank and the Bangas were booked to play a private concert for event invitees.

The big draw, though, was the ride itself, which doesn’t make guests wait long to experience Disney’s take on New Orleans magic.

Although nostalgists and Disney purists will predictably bemoan the loss of Splash Mountain, which opened in 1992 and closed in January 2023, it’s hard to find great fault with Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, especially from a New Orleans perspective.

Taking place a year after the events in the 1920s-set “Princess and the Frog,” it centers on Tiana’s Foods, a co-op founded by Tiana and her friends in an old salt dome — Disney’s explanation for the presence of a “mountain” in south Louisiana.

Guests entering the ride queue first pass through the co-op’s office, a two-story structure painted a bright yellow and adorned with murals designed by Baton Rouge artist Malaika Favorite.

Beyond, New Orleans flavor abounds.

Next to a time clock, for example, are punch cards featuring the names of Blanchard, Chase and son Dooky Chase III, who helped guide Imagineers before his death in February.

Even the trash receptacles throughout the attraction are themed accordingly, reading “Keep Our Bayous Clean.”

After winding through hallways bedecked with various mementos from Tiana’s personal and business adventures, guests pass through an ersatz kitchen, which includes a table piled high with beignets.

Imagineers promised the scent of beignets will waft through that part of the queue, although — in addition to a few other signs that the ride was not yet 100% complete — any such aroma was not evident Monday.

(Perhaps that was for the best. A “beignet”-flavored brew offered by Disney’s in-park coffee vendor, Joffrey’s, tasted more of hazelnut than anything. Similarly, the beignets it serves are beignets in shape only, boasting the density and flavor of garden-variety doughnuts. But, then, who’s going to Disney World for coffee and beignets?)

Upon climbing aboard the log-shaped ride vehicles, guests are greeted by an Audio Animatronic version of Princess Tiana, who recruits them to help her find one last ingredient needed for a Mardi Gras blowout she’s throwing for all of New Orleans.

That ingredient: musicians.

Floating through meticulously crafted Louisiana swamp scenes exploding with local flora, guests find them in the form of what Imagineers have dubbed “the critters,” some 19 new animal characters with varied musical talents.

There’s a rabbit who plays a license-plate washboard. There’s a bass-playing opossum, a fiddle-playing otter and a percussion-playing beaver. There are frogs, black bears, bobcats, a raccoon, a gray fox — each with a name, a personality, a backstory and, most importantly, an instrument.

(Notably absent: swamp-chewing nutria. But that’s no oversight. The orange-toothed rodents weren’t loosed on Louisiana until the 1930s, after the ride’s timeline.)

Along the way, Louisiana-flavored adaptations of songs from the film play, including the crowd-pleasers “Dig a Little Deeper” and “Almost There.” Meanwhile, a series of related adventures play out, such as one section in which riders, for reasons not entirely clear, are shrunk to the size of a frog by voodoo queen Mama Odie.

Then, of course, there is the ride’s big payoff: the famously steep, guest-soaking plunge.

That’s followed by a pull-out-the-stops Carnival party fueled by Morton’s earwormy “Special Spice,” which replaces “Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah” from Splash Mountain’s finale.

From the time Disney announced in June 2020 that it would retheme Splash Mountain, which was based on the racially problematic 1946 film “Song of the South,” the project has been closely watched by Disney fans.

Many have lamented the loss of what they deem a classic ride. Others, however, lauded Imagineers’ overarching intention to rethink the attraction in an effort to make it as inclusive as possible.

To do so, they decided to ditch “Song of the South” and instead take inspiration from 2009’s animated musical “The Princess and the Frog.”

“Tiana was our inspiration because Tiana is everybody’s princess,” said Imagineer Charita Carter, executive producer of the attraction. “She comes from a real place in America. She wasn’t born in royalty. She has a working mom. She has military ties, and there’s so much about her life that is relatable. Everyone can find an aspect of Tiana’s story in their own story, and so many people are inspired by her.”

So, when guests see the words “everybody’s welcome” on a sign guiding them to the attraction, and again in a headline on a prop newspaper in Tiana’s office, they can rest assured that Disney’s Imagineers mean it.

As they developed the ride, Imagineers made repeated research trips to New Orleans over the past four years, enlisting local artists, musicians, chefs and historians to help shape their vision and to ensure they represent the city’s unique culture with respect and authenticity — or at least Disney authenticity.

For her part, Stella Chase Reese — a daughter of Leah Chase and a consultant for the ride — said they nailed it.

“It delivers New Orleans,” Reese said midday Monday after experiencing the ride firsthand. “That’s what we want it to do. You know, I tell them all the time, we are a tourist city. We need whatever you can send our way, and I am so happy about this, because it gives people a little taste of New Orleans.”

The conversion of Disneyland’s Splash Mountain into a West Coast version of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is ongoing and is expected to open later this year at the Anaheim, California, theme park.