Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is a Magic Kingdom and Disneyland attraction. The ride replaced Splash Mountain on both coasts and has been highly anticipated for years. Taking guests down the Bayou, the log flume ride meets Tiana after the events of Princess and the Frog. In this post, we’ll review the Magic Kingdom version of the attraction.

Great stories have stakes. Frodo needed to destroy the ring to save Middle Earth, the Avengers needed to fight off Thanos to rescue half of humanity, Romeo and Juliet wanted their love or nothing else. Even if the stakes aren’t life or death, emotional connections are built to the point where the watcher has a vested interest in the character’s outcome and well being. I don’t necessarily need the risk of Ariel losing her voice forever but a story needs some kind of conflict!

While theme park rides aren’t as conventional of a storytelling device, they still follow similar principles. Passive rides will take you through important scenes like flying through Neverland or drifting past pirates meeting their demise. Others put you in the story in some absurdly high stakes action – bringing back an Iguanadon to the lab mere seconds before an asteroid hits the Earth or escaping a yeti on some of the world’s most famous mountains. There are a few more abstract and metaphorical rides, or other stories, but most have a weight added to whatever journey is being taken.

Perhaps no ride was better at that than Splash Mountain. Guests couldn’t avoid knowing that drop was waiting since you have to pass it to get to the queue. On top of that, the log flume track winds and winds back into the mountain. The anticipation kept building both in a very literal sense because of the track but also in Brer Rabbit’s story. Troubling source material aside, the attraction was a masterclass in setting up the high stakes drop. With the blueprint on what works for a log flume ride right in front of them, it’s puzzling how Tiana’s Bayou Adventure seems so… bland.

Some of the stakes I mentioned in Splash Mountain still exist for the successor, just not in the actual story. Guests are still aware of the drop that awaits them because it’s impossible to avoid unless you walk around Magic Kingdom blindfolded (I do not advise). Once guests are really in the ride and floating through the Bayou, the story lacks intrigue, at best, or is incomprehensible, at worst.

When entering Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, guests are caught up on what’s happening with the titular character. This is all explained really well in the queue, with as much detail as someone could want to absorb. The attraction is brave in that way, not acting as a book report of what did happen but instead introducing to what’s going on with our girl now.

Tiana’s Foods is where we end up before riding the boat. The queue wanders through gardens, offices, kitchens and salt mines. There are personal details on the walls and beignets on a table. It’s really an effective catch up, verging on giving guests too many details. The queue’s background story may not be necessary to the degree that it’s offered, but I do admire the effort. Both the queue and ride offer something original even if they’re based on IP characters. I’m always in favor of that.

Riders move down into the salt mine before boarding their boat and the detailed story, sadly, falls off. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a story. It’s just that this 11 minute ride’s plot can be summed up in very few words. In fact, let me see how few words I can do this in like Kevin from The Office: Find band for Tiana’s party. Five words. Obviously, this isn’t a totally fair representation of the scenes that are encountered. But it’s 11 minutes! Think of all of the Transformers fights Michael Bay could fit in that amount of time! Maybe that’s not a great example…

After the boat departs from loading and floats by that big drop, it starts to climb the outdoor lift hill. This is where we meet the first Tiana and, like all of the other animatronics on the ride, she looks fantastic. Perhaps the brightest spot of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is just how great all of the different figures look. This particular one talks about a party and sends up the hill to pass by some more farming and a fabulous armadillo named Lari, another highlight of the ride.

Once inside Louis and Tiana urge us along to watch different bands playing, a sort of tryout to be entertainment for the Mardi Gras party. There’s a few critter bands the log passes by, all of them adorable and fun! My favorite of them is a bear band with a wolf(?) playing a djembe. All of the critters are great, some are weirder than others and I’m all for that.

Unfortunately, the space in between these bands is dull. The ride uses a screen background that works well enough but isn’t visually interesting as the foreground. In no way does it add to the plot or move the story along, outside of just giving the illusion of floating down the bayou. Why there’s such quiet spaces in between characters is one of the biggest questions on the ride. These holes make the pacing of TBA lackluster. It’s not that I think every space needs to be filled, the ride just deserves more than that.

Eventually, our logs are shrunk down to the size of insects by Mama Odie and we get to experience smaller critters. It’s a weird choice, maybe nonsensical, but I applaud the weirdness. The issue is that the screen that Mama Odie shows up on to shrink the boat is the worst looking part of the attraction. A minute or two later, Louis shows up looking through that screen to find our shrunken down selves. That’s my biggest visual complaint of the ride as it takes me out of the setting.

While we’re on the subject, for being retrofitted Tiana’s Bayou Adventure looks good! The aforementioned critters and animatronics look great. The background works well enough although it’s counted on to do too much. Those screens in the shrunken place (I will refrain from a 2,000 word post comparing this to the sunken place in Get Out, at least for now) are the biggest issue. They’re offset by the incredible frogs down there though!

The whole experience in the shrunken place is strange. It’s both the most fascinating choice in the ride and easiest to pick on. I think that scene will age really well, finding a cult following for some of the characters in that area. I’ve been looking for metaphors in this ride, mainly because it’s devoid of plot points, and there has to be one in there. Maybe it’s simply a “good things come in small packages” story as we find another couple of musicians for the party down there. I’m all ears for a more sinister inference though!

Getting shrunken and going down the frog hole was a twist the ride needed narratively. But once we’re down there it turns out we’re just doing the same thing. There’s no surprises, no conflict and no stakes. We’ve already found a few bands for Tiana and now that we are the size of reptiles we get to… do the same thing! I find that more disappointing than anything about the ride. I get not having a villain or making this so it isn’t life or death. Not every ride needs to escape the First Order or end up in hell but having every single scene (outside of getting shrunk) do the same thing is so odd. The concept bogs the entire ride down.

Eventually we find enough bands, return to our normal size and then careen down the 50 foot drop without any reason. It’s a confounding choice! This is one of the biggest moments in any castle park and there is zero narrative attachment to it. For a ride that was passable before this moment, thanks to great animatronics and cute animal bands, this one sends me over the edge (pun intended). I generally will try to see all sides of something and review from that standpoint but there is no part of me that understands this particular choice.

The finale works well enough, as we gather at Tiana’s Mardi Gras party and are treated to music and dancing by more animatronics and figures. Given the prior lack of intrigue, there isn’t some huge emotional payoff. But it’s fun to see the different characters and hear the music! And I guess that’s part of the draw, or goal, of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. Maybe the lack of stakes was to make the whole thing feel more joyful and breezy the entire time.

Given the predecessor’s troubling and weighted history, I could see Disney wanting this to be a pure joy ride. The attraction doesn’t quite get to that blissful destination. I like the weirdness and the critters but there’s too much dead space and not enough endearing moments to win me over if that was the goal. This isn’t Small World – it’s not as abstract, there’s not as big of an earworm and there’s a 50 foot drop!

In the end, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is still enjoyable. There’s great animatronics, recognizable characters with original stories, some weirdness and one of the biggest thrills that a castle park has. But the plot, or lack of one, hurts the attraction. Having a fun, free of frills ride is okay but it leaves less room for error. And sometimes we need stakes! We need to know why we’re dropping 50 feet and don’t mind a few not-so-joyful moments that have led us there. I’ve tried to not mention or compare TBA to Splash Mountain throughout this review but I will here at the end. We want our stories to earn the party at the end. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is all about that party but I don’t think it’s ever earned.

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