Louisiana's master blacksmith creates custom handcrafted weathervane for Tiana's Bayou Adventure at Walt Disney World

Forum Forums Tweet Share Tweet Share

Gallery / 4 Photos
Tiana's Bayou Adventure weathervane

Posted: Friday January 5, 2024 11:15am ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

Walt Disney Imagineers have installed a custom handcrafted weathervane by Louisiana's master blacksmith, Darryl Reeves, at Tiana's Bayou Adventure in Magic Kingdom.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure weathervane

Darryl, a 3rd generation master blacksmith, and Vietnam Veteran has his work displayed across the city and worldwide.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure weathervane

"I take metal and do anything I want with it," the master blacksmith proudly says. "To have a free hand to design and fabricate the weathervane for Tiana's Bayou Adventure… that's an honor."

Tiana's Bayou Adventure replaces Splash Mountain with a planned opening in 2024 at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure logo

Discuss on the Forums

Get Walt Disney World News Delivered to Your Inbox

Midwest ElitistLess than a minute ago

😭 They destroyed my favorite part of the ride. After the drop there was Zip playing on a fiddle and harmonica, then the rest of the instruments and vocals filled in the finale. Here, it's completely disjointed.

yensidtlaw1969Less than a minute ago

You really can spare us these histronics.

Sirwalterraleigh1 minute ago

Is it possible that WDI can only function one way? As in they need to come up with the concepts/ride systems and then pitch them? What I’m getting at is if they are given something existing and told “we need to change this to X…”. They’re done. It doesn’t work well

ChesireCat112 minutes ago

This twitter thread has a bunch of pictures of the queue.

AdventureHasAName7 minutes ago

I don't think you have anything to worry about. OLC is not going to pay a fortune to turn their attraction into this.

Cliff11 minutes ago

Oriental Land Company - Please,...for the love of God....please PROTECT the last "Splash Mountain" on planet Earth. You have a wonderful peice of this company's history. Please DEFEND and PRORECT it from Brubank as hard as you possibly can. I'm using my entire 2024 WDW budget to fly to Tokyo in October for 6 days and I can't wait to ride Tony Baxter's masterpeice once again. PLEASE Tokyo....fight this disaster from Burbank as best you can! Fans all over the world will adore you and thank you for it!!

FettFan12 minutes ago

Same with the primeval diorama at Universe of Energy…the painted backdrop and lighting effects made the space look like it went FAR into the distance, when in reality it was maybe 10 feet behind the brontosaur family.

LittleBuford12 minutes ago

I’m not defending the screens; I thought I was pretty clear about that. I was just disputing your “warehouse of screens” characterisation, which still doesn’t really make sense to me.

Midwest Elitist18 minutes ago

The trees and scenery on the side did a fantastic job of limiting what you can see, and the painted walls had an affect where the distance looked believable from the logs. Because that was the design of the attraction. With the 2D screens, the animations suspend all disbelief, and ruins the immersion completely.

PREMiERdrum18 minutes ago

Some incredible figures, dazzling visual moments, a great score... and yet, it appears to fall flat. Far too much effort put into the off-ride story, and not nearly enough put into the ride experience. An end result that looks to be far less than the sum of its parts.