Tiana's Bayou Adventure — Attraction in Bay Lake

This is one of the marquee rides of the Magic Kingdom. Book your fast pass before the day of your trip or you will not likely get one. This was the hardest lesson I had to learn from previous visit to mouse land. It used to be that if there was a long line you could get a fast pass at the ride and come back. Now with magic bands and the smart phone app people are taking the allotment of fast passes days before you will be visiting. You can still get a fast pass the day of at one of their kiosks but it will be for the less popular rides or a character meet and greet. I really do not like this latest development. I like spontaneity and want to eat when I want to eat and ride when I want to ride. The app has killed all that. Now two weeks in advance you need to decide that you will be riding a ride at such a time and eating somewhere else at such a time. You better know your park layout. If you fail to plan you will be waiting three hours in line for a ride and getting shut out of a restaurant you really want to eat at. At 11 pm the night before we went to the Magic Kingdom we grabbed the last 9 pm fast pass for Splash Mountain via the phone app. Even with the fast pass our ride line was long and it took an hour to get through to the end of the ride which means we almost missed the Happily Ever After fireworks. To save you some stress don't take a fast pass for this ride past 8 pm if you don't want to miss Happily Ever after, and trust me you do not want to miss it. The moral of the story is if you fail to plan you will be cranky and hungry.

Okay on to the ride. This is a log flume ride based off the 1946 movie Song of the South. Don't know Song of the South? Long considered a racist movie for it's depiction of African Americans during the reconstruction period after the Civil War Disney would just as soon have you forget all about it. Instead of outdated depictions of African Americans you have cute animatronic animals like Br'er Rabbit trying to escape from Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear. The tallest drop follows Br'er Rabbit pleading not to be thrown in the briar patch. It's a really fun ride with a few drops. On the final drop they snap your picture. On this ride we got the front seat. Although I have gotten splashed I have never gotten the soaking I did on this ride. It was really slow loading for some reason and at one point our log was stuck next to a waterfall that just poured water onto me. No worries though, it's hot and it's Florida, I was dry by the end of Happily Ever After, Although still fun this ride is getting pretty dated now. I was thinking maybe an update to...

An innocent attraction destroyed for this? A sad, miserable, cheap, low, lazy, lousy, bland, boring, feeble, half-baked, senseless, pointless, plotless, suspenseless, villianless, and mostly empty, slimy mudhole full of animation screens ugly as sin. I've never been so shocked and appalled. Chick-A-Pin Hill destroyed for a salt mine, and the Briar Patch destroyed for a swamp. It doesn't even match in Frontierland, and there are no mountains in New Orleans. Not even one small hill. Splash Mountain didn't do anything wrong. It was never racist. It had absolutely nothing to do with all the racism in the country.

This was one of the few things from Disney I felt very happy in, away from everything that made me so upset. Just when I was starting to really love Splash Mountain, they throw it away when I needed it the most. They try to erase racism by destroying the ride, and yet they have a sign in the queue that says something racial, "Remember, salt mines are reserved for seasoned veterans." That's unacceptable and disrespectful humor. They tell us that stories matter, and yet they discredit and destroy a very important one. Splash Mountain wasn't only an excellent flume ride, but also an important life lesson our children and our children's children need to learn if they believe their home life has brought them nothing but trouble that they're thinking about running away.

You can't run away from trouble. There ain't no place that far.

Even the whole Disney company today should realize that. It means more than just learning not to run away from home. Destroying Splash Mountain and replacing it with this sleazy and insulting DEI propaganda of a retheme will never stop racism in the country or the world. I will never ride this retheme while Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Bear are wrongly being treated like vermin. I'll never go back to the Magic Kingdom again as long as this is themed this way, as long as Disney doesn't pardon Song of the South or Splash Mountain. And as far as I'm concerned, both Song of the South and Splash Mountain are a very important part of history itself.

Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah! Long Live the Briar Patch! Bring Back Splash Mountain! Splash Mountain...

Here is my honest review on Tiana's Bayou Adventure. Splash Mountain has always been my favorite ride of all time. It was so fun, creative, unique, adventurous, and most of all, magical! Splash Mountain was great! I was pretty disappointed when I heard that Splash Mountain as we knew it would be going away forever. But The Princess and the Frog movie really has a lot of fans. I have never been into it, but it is loved by many. And even for movies I don't care for, it is usually different with the rides. Even if the movie isn't all that good, I don't mind it being a ride. The ride just has to be good. And that isn't the case for Tiana's Bayou Adventure! Splash Mountain was so full of heart! But the Imagineers took out all of the joy from it and made it a pile of crap! It is a pile of crap for a few reasons! The ride is boring! The story is extremely slow. Slow meaning that there are so many empty spaces throughout the ride. So you will have one cool effect or animatronic to pick up the story, then it's an awkward pause until you finally reach the next animatronic figure. So it has very awkward pauses in it. Plus the story isn't even good! Splash Mountain was literally built to pump up your adrenaline! I mean the final drop literally simulated you being thrown off of a waterfall into a Briar Patch! Now it is as simple as "Woo lets get you to the party!". So they turned a masterpiece into something that is just so boring. What are the other issues? Malfunctions. This ride has malfunctions left, right, up, down, upside down, sideways, and all directions! You will always see multiple animatronics just not working! And if animatronic failures aren't bad enough, it has constant breakdowns! This thing can and will go down multiple times a day! It is Disney World's most unreliable attraction yet! It went from being the best ride at Disney, to the worst ride at Disney! Back to animatronic issues, the Louis animatronic is already showing wear and tear! It appears to literally be falling apart! This ride looks about a decade old and it isn't even 1 year old! This ride is not aging well! Congratulations Disney, you did it. You actually did it. You ruined the best...