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I guess he qualifies as a Disney adult, the pejorative term for adults visiting Disney theme parks without kids in tow.
Disney has 12 theme parks and two water parks around the world and I’ve been to them all. I was at Walt Disney World in Florida when the theme park reopened in July 2020 after being closed for four months during the coronavirus pandemic. And I was at Disneyland in California in 2022 when Mickey Mouse was allowed to share hugs again after a two-year hiatus caused by the pandemic. I also hung out at the Turkey Leg Stand in Disneyland’s Frontierland for an entire afternoon.
And this month, when Disney World started testing its new ride, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, I was on it.
But I didn’t do any of that as a die-hard Disney fan. I go to company parks because, as an entertainment reporter, it’s part of my job.
Early in my career, in the late 1990s, I covered “hard news,” including police and court cases in Philadelphia. This post was a picnic compared to my current one. Disney does not respond well, to put it mildly, when articles puncture the myth of the Happiest Place on Earth. I once tried to get information from a Toy Story Mania operator—I wanted to know how Disneyland employees felt about the new security procedures—and a corporate communications officer appeared out of nowhere and abruptly ended the conversation.
As of 2021, The Walt Disney Company had a global media relations team of 500 people. There is only one of me. However, I plan to cover all the big news.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure caught my eye as a potential story in 2020. That summer, as racial justice protests swept the United States, Disney said it would close Splash Mountain, a popular and troubled log ride based on its film Disney’s 1946 “Song of the South” and would replace it with one based on Tiana, Disney’s first black princess. Tiana, an aspiring chef in 1920s New Orleans, was featured in the 2009 animated film “The Princess and the Frog”.
The new ride would use the same route as Splash Mountain, but be completely redesigned. Instead of featuring characters and music from “Song of the South,” an Oscar-winning film with racist depictions, the log would follow Tiana’s journey to the bayou, looking for musicians to play at a Mardi Gras party.
Some people cheered the decision to remove Splash Mountain. Others threw full-blown wheezing fits.
It’s easy to dismiss this kind of behavior—the good, the bad, the ugly—in one word: stupid. It’s a log, people. Come to your senses.
But Disney is a huge part of how many people make their memories. Even the smallest change at a Disney park can cause strong reactions. Other examples include a botched update of the Enchanted Tiki Room attraction at Disney World in the late 1990s and concerns over a 2012 update of a revue called “Country Bear Jamboree.”
Park devotees want to relive their memories as accurately as possible when they visit again. Logs no longer smell musty. They are supposed to smell musty!
At the same time, the addition of a major ride themed around a black heroine — the first attraction at a Disney theme park based on a black character — will have a positive impact on young visitors, particularly those of color. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure will open to the public at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom on June 28. A similar version of the ride is set to arrive at Disneyland by the end of the year. Together, the two parks attract approximately 40 million visitors annually. This is cultural power.
The revamped ride also offered insight into Disney as a business. Yes, the company was trying to correct a mistake by removing Splash Mountain. But the change was also about looking at the country’s changing demographics and identifying a potential growth opportunity: to “widen the net,” as one Disney ride designer told me, by creating more inclusive spaces in the park.
For these reasons and others, I try not to be too cynical in coverage. In my main article, I really, really wanted to make a joke about Disney missing the mark by naming the new ride Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. Shouldn’t it be called The Princess and the Log? Quite a reversal, I decided.
To report on the article, I flew to Florida from my home base in Los Angeles and stayed the night at one of Disney’s cheapest hotels, the Port Orleans. (As part of the Times’ ethical guidelines, I never accept anything for free from Disney. The Times covered the bill.) The next morning, I met with Jacquee Wahler, a Disney World communications executive who respects the journalistic process. He took me to a conference room behind Main Street in the Magic Kingdom, where I interviewed a ride designer.
After about an hour, we walked the course, which was in the testing phase. And after more interviews, I got on a log with a designer and made several trips to the bayou, asking questions along the way.
I didn’t like getting wet. (Luckily, my notebook was spared.) But taking the time to be there made for a better article—and helped me understand what Disney was trying to do with the ride in a way I couldn’t quite understand from the phone.
As is often the case with Disney rides, the attention to detail was evident. For example, the ride is embroidered with thousands of tiny white and pink artificial flowers. But it was the smiles of the passengers that left the biggest impression – especially those on the faces of the Black riders. “I finally feel like I belong here,” cried one woman.
