SANTA ANA, Calif. — Disneyland visitors riding Tiana’s Bayou Adventure will float through a swamp illuminated by fireflies while being serenaded by audio-animatronic critters playing zydeco music on instruments fashioned from objects found in the bayou when the attraction opens in 2024, officials announced last week.
Disneyland announced in 2020 that Splash Mountain would be rethemed to the 2009 animated hit “The Princess and the Frog” after complaints about the ride’s original theme, based on the 1946 movie “Song of the South,” which has been criticized for perpetuating negative stereotypes about Black people. The movie, an adaptation of the “Uncle Remus” stories of the plantation-era South, has never been released on home video and is not available on the Disney+ streaming service.
Calls to change the ride’s theme intensified in 2020 amid the protests that followed the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure will feature its titular heroine and other characters as they celebrate Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Disney has been teasing the upcoming attraction in recent months, unveiling a scale model of the ride at the D23 Expo in Anaheim in September. The park opened Eudora’s Chic Boutique, a New Orleans Square store selling apparel, accessories, housewares and “Princess and the Frog”-themed merchandise, in late September. The store’s backstory is that is owned by Eudora, Tiana’s dress-making mother.
Disney also said that the Splash Mountain ride at Walt Disney World in Florida will close Jan. 23 to begin its transformation to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. Information on Splash Mountain at Disneyland will be announced at a later date, according to a Disneyland blog post.
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