Disney World Introduces New Status for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure

Theme Parks

Disney is anticipating the troubles they’ve had with Tiana’s Bayou Adventure will continue after the ride launches. The new attraction – which will replace Splash Mountain, the most popular theme park ride in the world – has broken down repeatedly during its previews (when the press and online influencers tried it out on the occasions where it actually ran), fire alarms have gone off, and the animatronics have malfunctioned. A few times, the ride had to be evacuated. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is scheduled to open to the public on June 28, 2024, and many wondered how Disney would get the ride in shape for its big debut. Apparently, the answer is that they won’t, and they’re okay with that. According to Mickey Blog, the app for Annual Passholders (who have early access to the ride) now has the virtual queue read “boarding paused,” meaning no guests can board the ride – presumably because it broke down yet again. This status replaces the previous “not boarding” passholders got when Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was temporarily kaput. The new status looks like this:

Tiana’s Bayou Adventure continues to experience delays at it rolls into its remaining Annual Passholder preview days #tianasbayouadventure pic.twitter.com/eB9KV84QPB

— MickeyBlog.com (@MickeyBlog_) June 17, 2024

Mickey Blog tries to be upbeat about this, saying this will hopefully buy Disney time to get Tiana’s Bayou Adventure up and running before its public unveiling. WDW Pro, on the other hand, believes this suggests Disney knows the ride won’t be ready for prime time:

I tend to think Pro is right; why introduce a new status, which appears to be used only for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, just for one more week of previews? It’s more likely that Disney knows this ride won’t be ready on time, and they’re getting ahead of it as best they can. Well, that’s not right; “as best they can” would mean delaying the ride and fixing it before offering it to paying customers like a bunch of hucksters. It reminds me of what they do with their movies, announcing release dates before they even have a script and then shoving out shoddy films to meet their target. However, they do actually delay the movies sometimes, whereas they’re hell-bent on getting Tiana’s Bayou Adventure open on the announced day. Pro’s suggestion that this may be caused by Disney employees leaving for Universal Studios and other parks is interesting; I have no idea if that’s true, but given that Universal has Epic Universe on the horizon and Disney just replaced its star attraction with something that breaks down every five minutes, I find it plausible. And I have to say, I’m kind of pleased with this; Disney is replacing Splash Mountain for all the wrong reasons, and they don’t care how much people loved it. Let them reap the whirlwind.