Tiana’s Bayou Journey Opens at Disney World, Changing Splash Mountain

On the entrance of the road, a crackling old-time radio greets you, with a thick New Orleans-accented host on a simulated radio broadcast blaring Crescent Metropolis music because the scent of freshly fried beignets tantalizes your senses. This queue results in Disney Parks’ latest attraction, Tiana’s Bayou Journey, in Disney World.  

The music is so foot-stomping, jazzy, and vibrant that Terence Blanchard, who performed the trumpet for Louis in “The Princess and the Frog” and helped to curate it for the brand new attraction, endlessly jokes that folks gained’t even need to go away the queue to expertise the experience.

“We received numerous nice bands which might be enjoying numerous actually enjoyable, infectious kind of music, and I hope everyone has a very good time,” Blanchard tells Kindred by Mother and father. “We have been fearful about individuals not getting on the experience and desirous to get again in line and take heed to the music…The thought is to only make the entire expertise one thing enjoyable from starting to finish.”

When you let your creativeness take over, you’re all the way in which in, and all of a sudden it’s 1927 in south Louisiana. Tiana has taken her entrepreneurial spirit to her neighborhood, creating Tiana’s Meals, an employee-owned co-op situated in a former salt mine. As attraction-goers make their technique to the mine, they’re greeted by images, newspaper clippings, and a walk-through of Tiana’s kitchen earlier than they head into the very sensible salt mine, full with sharp crystals alongside the partitions.

Riders then board a log flume for a singular journey down the bayou. They’re in the hunt for musicians for a Mardi Gras celebration hosted by Tiana and her husband, Naveen. What higher place to seek out musicians than within the harmonious bayou the place cicadas hum, frogs take the bass, and animatronic critters play handmade devices like washboards and buckets?

However that is no calm crusing. It’s a heart-pounding swamp tour by way of darkish areas with sudden drops and sharp turns. Riders will hear acquainted voices, like Louis the alligator (Michael Leon-Wooley), the southern belle sweetness of Princess Tiana (Anika Noni Rose), and the raspy snarl of the kindest Voodoo priestess you possibly can ever meet—Mama Odie, voiced by Jenifer Lewis.  

“I like Mama Odie a lot,” Lewis tells Kindred by Mother and father. She developed the character’s voice and even her personal comedic stylings by listening to iconic jokester Mothers Mabley’s information as a baby. “I discovered my comedian timing from her—she was highly effective like that. I imply, she was simply wonderful. And my mom had all her albums, so I simply discovered her timing. And after they requested me if I may play an outdated lady at [“The Princess and the Frog”] audition…I used Mothers Mabley to develop Mama Odie.”

Riders will meet Mama Odie alongside the way in which by way of the darkness of the swamp lure. That’s, in fact, the place she lives. However there’s a lot Disney magic within the expertise that it’s exhausting to worry what lies forward. So as an alternative, pleasure ensues as “Dig a Little Deeper” performs whereas the log flume slowly edges up an incline.

“You’ll get [to the party] very quickly,” an animatronic Mama Odie says simply as riders make their means a gorgeous view of Magic Kingdom Park.

Then it’s a 50-foot drop paying homage to Tiana and Naveen’s froggy fall into the bayou simply earlier than they meet Ray the Cajun firefly within the movie. As riders react to the joys of all of it, the flume slowly floats within the beaming sunshine because it makes its means right into a cave-like construction, welcoming company to the occasion of the century.

Tiana is dressed gorgeously, singing a gorgeous new tune, “Particular Spice,” penned by New Orleans musician PJ Morton, who effortlessly pays homage to New Orleans jazz requirements within the genuine Disney tune.

Voiced by Rose, the large band-sounding track is a good-time vibe and a little bit of a dream come true for its native New Orleanian songwriter.

“I’m genuinely a Disney [fan], I like these songs,” Morton tells Kindred by Mother and father. “When [Disney called] me, I knew the place I wished to go instantly; it was a matter of which sort of Disney vibe… [but I also didn’t] need to be a caricature of New Orleans. I am not making an attempt to make what you have at all times heard precisely. There’s going to be that contact of that, however let’s simply make it genuine, an important track that may stay ceaselessly. And so, it is a mixture of all these issues—it’s New Orleans, however it’s nonetheless me, however it’s nonetheless Disney, and all these issues got here very organically to me and really naturally to me.”

After the exhilarating expertise of coming into the co-op, venturing by way of the bayou, and dropping in on a celebration, riders exit their flumes and make their technique to the attraction-themed retailer, the place every little thing from clothes, equipment, toys, cookbooks, and spices is accessible.

The spices are straight from one of many oldest household eating places within the U.S., Dooky Chase’s, nurtured for many years by the household’s late matriarch Leah Chase. Chase, additionally hailed because the Queen of Creole Delicacies, is who Princess Tiana is modeled after, not simply as a chef however as an entrepreneur and a gold-hearted, resilient one who sought her desires on the power of phrases that resonated together with her all through her life. It is a considerate notice that riders will possible expertise through the attraction and as they reminisce in regards to the cartoon movie that impressed all of it.

“As I take into consideration the story of Princess Tiana, I am reminded of my grandmother, a narrative of a younger lady chasing her desires,” says Edgar “Dook” Chase IV, Leah’s grandson and government chef at Dooky Chase’s. “Her father would inform her as she headed off to New Orleans for college, ‘Keep in mind three issues, work exhausting, pray, and do for others.’

He says that Leah remembered these ideas as she started working in French Quarter eating places, turned a seamstress, and chased her desires. Quickly she would meet his grandfather, a good-looking trumpeter and band chief Dooky Chase.

“Dooky’s household had a small restaurant known as Dooky Chase’s that Leah would finally flip into her nice eating dream. The connection isn’t just about how Tiana realized her dream, however extra importantly, it is about confidence, resilience, and love of neighborhood. That’s the true connection to us all,” says Chase. 

The extremely anticipated attraction is now open at Magic Kingdom in Disney World and can open in Disneyland later this yr.