Tiana’s Bayou Adventure ride replaces Splash Mountain at Disneyland in 2024

The controversial Splash Mountain rides at Disneyland and Walt Disney World will reopen in 2024 with a “Princess and the Frog” theme that will replace the current backstory based on the 1940s Disney film “Song of the South” criticized for perpetuating racist stereotypes.

Tiana’s Bayou Adventure attractions will replace the Splash Mountain water rides at Disneyland and Florida’s Magic Kingdom in late 2024, according to Disney officials.

The new attraction name and opening date were announced by Disney officials on Friday, July 1 at Preservation Hall in New Orleans during the Essence Festival of Culture.

Walt Disney Imagineering has traveled to Louisiana and New Orleans during research trips for the revamped ride to work with academics, musicians, chefs, local experts and cultural institutions.

“In many ways, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is a love letter to New Orleans,” Charita Carter, Imagineering executive producer of relevancy activations, said in a statement. “Like the musical city that inspired this attraction, Tiana’s second act is about a community working in harmony to achieve something extraordinary. She reminds us of an immutable truth we can all relate to: ‘If you do your best each and every day, good things are sure to come your way.’ And that’s a melody we can all sing along to.”

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Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose, who voiced Princess Tiana in the movie, let the 2024 opening date slip out in early June during an appearance on “Live with Ryan and Kelly.”

“I’ve been involved in the beginning, just talking about how we want it to be, what we want it to do,” Rose said on the show. “But if I were to tell you anything else, I would be sucked into the ground and you’d never see me again.”

Disneyland and Disney World have not yet announced closing dates for the classic log flume rides on both coasts.

Further details about the twin makeovers of the Splash Mountain rides are expected to be revealed during the D23 Expo in September at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Disney announced in June 2020 the Splash Mountain log flume rides at Disneyland in Anaheim and the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida would be transformed by Walt Disney Imagineering with a new theme based on “The Princess and the Frog” animated movie.

The reimagining of the rides will remove thematic elements related to “Song of the South” — the controversial 1940s animated film criticized for perpetuating racist sterotypes that has been disowned by Disney.

The Splash Mountain attractions remain open at Disneyland and Florida’s Magic Kingdom with no closing dates announced.

Imagineering has been developing a “Princess and the Frog” backstory for Splash Mountain since 2019 and settled on many of the concepts for the reimagined attraction in summer 2019.

The move by Disney in 2020 to announce changes to the rides followed a flurry of social media buzz calling for the parks to update Splash Mountain’s controversial backstory amid social justice protests across the United States sparked by the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis.

Splash Mountain features characters and songs from Disney’s 1946 “Song of the South” film based on the “Uncle Remus” stories — a collection of folktales from the Southern plantation era compiled by Joel Chandler Harris and published in the 1880s — that have been criticized for perpetuating racist stereotypes. Disney shelved the controversial live-action/animated musical film in the 1980s and the company’s former CEO Bob Iger said the movie would not appear on the Disney+ streaming service.

The 2009 “Princess and the Frog” was celebrated as Disney’s first animated depiction of an African-American princess. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated feature and received two nods in the best original song category for “Almost There” and “Down in New Orleans.”

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