New concept art and details unveiled for Tiana's Bayou Adventure at Walt Disney World

The MomJul 21, 2025

This thread will serve to update on construction progress, new storyline details, and other details specific to Tiana's Bayou Adventure. It is not to discuss the merits of the retheme of Splash Mountain, please continue to use the original thread at https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads...s-and-the-frog-tianas-bayou-adventure.965899/

osianJul 20, 2025

Test Track 3.0 in the forest drive section!

WorldExplorerJul 20, 2025

"Old Epcot and Tokyo did/do it" is exactly the response I expected.

MerlinTheGoatJul 20, 2025

There are some other Disney attractions in the world that have somewhat brightly lit environments in that same vein. And there used to be a larger amount at WDW years back. Several of the old EPCOT Future World classics did, and Great Movie Ride with some scenes. One attraction that has some very similar looking sunny scenery to Splash that still exists today (and isn't Splash) is Pooh's Hunny Hunt from Tokyo.

JayspencyJul 20, 2025

I think living with the land did this as well for the farm scene. Though it’s much darker in there compared to splash.

MerlinTheGoatJul 20, 2025

How did you get any of this out of that post? They said the exact opposite. The only real similarity with the previous ride is that they reused the same building and track layout. The reason why that's an issue is because TBA does not work with this layout. A more talented team probably could have come up with a better fit. But as it stands, almost none of the scenes feel like much thought was put into them. The concerns Tony Baxter noted in a podcast about how you need a tense and scary story to justify the lifts and drops also ended up being accurate. Secondly, the scenery is very off in a number of ways. I've mentioned this myself. The previous ride's environments were all thoroughly stylized to appear like a cartoon come to life. Most of the set design was custom, sculpted and painted in an exaggerated and non-realistic art style. One of the best comparison examples are the grassy surfaces in those shots above. In the previous ride, the grass was a sculpted element, it was a largely smooth minimally textured surface. Only the edges had a bit of physical texture to simulate thick cartoonish blades of grass draping over the sides of the riverbank. The paint and brush strokes did the work for all of the finer detail and texture. And they used very bright colors that popped even in a bright "sunny" looking environment. TBA is also based on an animated film, and it has figures that are somewhat similarly cartoony and stylized to that of the predecessor. Some of the walls are also hand painted (with animated projections) in this style. Those elements look somewhat appropriate to the cartoon stylization at least. However, no such consideration was given to the physical set design at all, resulting in different art styles clashing together. They filled in the mostly gutted sets with generic realistic fake grass bought from a store. They attempted to simulate a colorful painted style with lighting, but it doesn't work well because the shapes and textures that fill out the setpieces still have that generic realistic appearance. Lights also can't control fine details like paint and brush strokes can. In a ride that was going for a more realistic setting such as Pirates or Living with the Land, this realistic foliage would work well (provided everything else matched). But not for a ride based off an animated film with cartoony characters and backgrounds.

IncomudroJul 19, 2025

The current crop of Imaginears - or at least the crew assigned to this project - truly don't know what they are doing. I've said it before, I'll say it again: With Splash, each scene was a storyboard. The scenes worked even when static. There was a sense of implied movement, and every scene worked even by itself. Narration wasn't even needed. With Tiana, it's all gesturing and dialog.

Jedi14Jul 19, 2025

From what they had said about the show, it was to be set after TBA and partially about Tiana’s new role as a community leader and future queen.

LindseyDisneyJul 19, 2025

I posted this on reddit and I thought I would share my thoughts on here. I'm curious what everyone thinks? This is just my own wild theory, but I’ve always thought the characters we’re seeing in Tiana's Bayou Adventure were originally meant to be introduced in the canceled Tiana series. Since that show was scrapped, I can’t help but wonder what the future holds for Tiana's Bayou Adventure. My guess is that in the next 10 to 15 years, Disney might end up tweaking the ride's storyline. While they’ll definitely keep the Princess and the Frog IP, I could see them changing the narrative. Or potential inclusion of Dr. Facilier. With the upcoming Villains Land in the parks, how can they not include him? I’m almost imagining a scenario like Journey into Imagination. where we end up with two different Princess and the Frog storylines / rides in the parks.

EagleScout610Jul 19, 2025

Even as someone with a Splash poster 10 feet from my desk, and Br'er Bear and Rabbit funkos among the many on my desk, I get the annoyance, but it's pointless to rehash the Splash argument again. Splash is gone, and now we can just make fun of how bad Bayou is

HMFJul 19, 2025

For my own sanity I mostly avoided the Splash threads from 2020 until it opened and then rendered my opinion.

HMFJul 18, 2025

I remember thinking in the early 2010s Things at WDW probably could not get any worse, I was wrong about that.

WorldExplorerJul 18, 2025

And now we're supposed to do all of this all over again. I don't normally quote myself, but I feel like I really got the Piston Peak situation down pat a year ago;

Splash4evaJul 18, 2025

Exactly. We saw the same playbook with GMR. Sadly no matter what shape Splash was in and towards the end and even other times its was rough with many things not working but end of day the ride was still the best and a classic. One where you can sing from start to finish and have an absolute joyous time on.