Disney Parks Panic: The Story Behind Splash Mountain

Early access to an exclusive article coming out on That Park Place later today:

It was the Summer of Love in 2020 and The Walt Disney Company had a very new and very vulnerable streaming service that had just launched critical to the future of the House of Mouse. Bob Chapek had been named the CEO of The Walt Disney Company, a pandemic was raging, the parks were closed with no knowledge when they might ever open (70% of the company's profit by the way), and Bob Iger had "left" the company but was still in charge in spite of declarations to the public. It was under this setting that Disney Parks made the announcement that they would be changing Splash Mountain to Tiana's Bayou Adventure. Hasty concept art was sent out to the masses and Disney's most popular attraction was on its way to being transformed. It was seen as a sufficient and manageable sacrifice to make in order to protect Disney+ from a potential boycott at a time when companies all over the world were doing whatever they could to prevent racial backlash.

But a hasty plan has resulted in significant problems. Very early on it was determined that the concept art was absolutely unfeasible. The tree and boat on top of Splash Mountain, replacing a tree stump on the iconic structure, were deemed impossible. The structure's supports, not to mention sightlines, made the image an utter fantasy. A boat and a log would render the ride's structural integrity untenable and thus Disney quickly had to reconfigure what the attraction would look like. Imagineers realized that without the ability to put anything on top of the iconic flume ride would leave them in a position where they had to make a mountain look like a bayou... but bayous don't have mountains. It was a task with absolutely no solution. Instead, they simply covered the entire thing with plastic plants and miniature trees -- themselves made to look out of perspective next to real trees planted near the attraction that tower over all of it.

But it was actually worse at Disneyland. There, Imagineers discovered that sightlines would be damaged by even their diminutive cypress trees. And it wasn't just the structure that couldn't be added to in the way originally conceived. Instead, Disneyland even featured the additional problem of a bridge so badly out of code that upgrades to the attraction would need to be delayed significantly. A decision to open Disney World's version a year ahead of Disneyland as a result (plus the inability to get animatronic parts in time) also meant Disney would open Tiana's at the worst possible location first. After all, Splash Mountain's story takes place in Southern Georgia... only a four-hour drive from Orlando. Sentiment for Tiana's Bayou Adventure could not be lower in a very red Sunshine State adjacent to the very setting for Splash Mountain's story.

Internally, this very poor situation was pushed away with a "Disney nice" C-Suite spin. Executives comforted one another and prepared to allay fears with Disney World management by telling them that Tiana's Bayou Adventure would be just like when Disneyland changed their Tower of Terror into a Guardians of the Galaxy ride. But many weren't buying it. California Adventure's Tower of Terror had always been a bargain bin version of Tower of Terror that audiences rejected. Changing it was a positive because Californians resented having half the ride that existed in Hollywood Studios in Orlando. But Splash Mountain was no discount attraction. Splash Mountain was the most popular ride in all of Disney World.

Still, the narrative was pressed and even the design philosophy made its way into the attraction. Under the direction of Walt Disney Imagineering Diversity and Inclusion guru, Carmen Smith, the decision was made to strip away any tension or fearful moments from the new ride. Instead of a briar patch and ominous vultures, the new attraction would have a remixed "Dig a Little Deeper" playing all the way up the lift hill. A Mama Odie animatronic would have guests clapping and singing their way to the top where they would fall into Bayou Magic. Animated flamingos would fill the lift hill tunnel, making any sense of dread a thing of the past.

An effort was made to make the attraction be a bizarre mishmash of Tiana from Princess and the Frog and stealing the company history of Tabasco. Now, Tiana would be the owner of a hot sauce co-op that operates on a Salt Dome eerily similar to Tabasco's Avery Island. But bad PR situations made even this convoluted story even more problematic. An artist who worked on the attraction was revealed to have a militant background. The voice actress who plays Mama Odie was featured on a podcast in which she viciously attacked the conservatives Disney needs to win back to its weakening Disney World attendance.

Meanwhile, budget constraints also meant that the ride could not be anything close to the ride that it was replacing. This truly was the final nail for the attraction's potential. Gone were seventy animatronics. Instead of being reused for the ride, budget requirements (and a desire to move Frontierland into a Bayou setting) meant that the animatronics from Splash Mountain were broken down and used to build new animatronic mechanics for a re-done Country Bears show (more on that coming soon). In the place of seventy animatronics would be a mixture of projections, fog, less-than-twenty animatronics and a number of statues that Disney might call animatronics because their eyes feature a simple projection imitating pupil movement.

Because of the lack of budget and the need to send almost all the old animatronics to build parts for Country Bears 2.0, nearly all the animatronic budget was spent on the finale seen where there was simply no way to do an ending without animatronics. There are many reasons for this, but we'll leave that for another article. But even there an unforced error led many to believe the team behind the ride was in over its head. Original music for the ride used for the finale was seen as hugely risky given that this new music would assuredly be compared to Zip-a-dee-doo-dah... and it was (and is) unproven with audiences.

Finally, the ride also lost the support of one of its biggest pieces Disney needed to insure the attraction would be as good as the original. Tony Baxter, the man who led the design of Splash Mountain, was brought back to WDI to help the team redesign Tiana's Bayou Adventure. However, after seeing that this attraction would not be a "book report"... but instead a completely new adventure for Tiana foreign to guests, Baxter had serious doubts. Ultimately he would leave under the belief that guests did not want Tiana mixed with Indiana Jones. Chasing after a secret ingredient, being shrunk to the size of frogs with bayou fog magic, the elimination of any sense of tension... all of it was something that Baxter didn't want his name attached to.

But now, Disney is nearing its reveal of Tiana's Bayou Adventure. It has been a very bumpy ride. Ultimately, the removal of their most popular attraction may prove to either be a timeless upgrade or an extremely costly failure. Quietly, Disney World management worries the attraction has been "feminized" and made far too political. Of course, saying such a thing would put someone in serious trouble with higher-ups at Burbank. And so, they're whistling the same tune as they open a ride that looks nothing like the original vision, features extremely few animatronics, is based on design philosophy of the Guardians ride in Disneyland, and which is desperately trying to "activate" sales of brand-new co-op critters that were designed for maximum retail impact.

But unfortunately for Disney, those who have experienced the ride already wish Disney had "dug a little deeper" and given this the forethought and budget it needed to achieve what Splash Mountain had already for decades prior.