User:Srlustgarten/Tiana's Bayou Adventure

Copied from Tiana's Bayou Adventure

In June 2020, it was announced that the Splash Mountain attraction themed to Disney's 1946 film Song of the South at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, would be rethemed based on The Princess and the Frog. Disney stated that the development of the project began in 2019, prior to the online petitions that were circulated during the George Floyd protests.

[My Edits Here]

Specifically, there was renewed scrutiny of the film, which is “rarely aired” or streamed because of its controversial “racial aspects." Concerning the story of a young boy visiting a Georgia plantation, it has been criticized for portraying African Americans stereotypically, making them look content with plantation life in the post-Civil War South. At its release, the NAACP protested its subject matter and content for its insensitivity. Using mostly animatronics recycled from the old 1976 Bicentennial Celebration in Bear Country, the Imagineers based Splash Mountain on the animated portions of the movie, a fact which the company felt would make them unaffected by any of these issues.

As Disney announced and planned to replace Splash Mountain, there was pushback by multiple individuals. In particular, a petition on the website Change.org received over 100,000 signatures to “Save Splash Mountain and keep it as it is in Magic Kingdom and Disneyland,” which argued that such changes would be pandering “to a small group of ‘Disney haters' that don’t understand the story, and re-theme such a nostalgic ride.” Other nostalgic fans lined up to go on the ride one last time, and there were reports of water from the ride being collected and auctioned on EBay. Disney continued with their plan, shutting the ride down in Disney World in January 2023, and the Disneyland version in May 2023.

[End of My Edits] The New York Times reported that Disney executives had privately discussed removing the attraction's Song of the South theme for at least five years, before putting into development a theme based on The Princess and the Frog. The project is being led by Walt Disney Imagineer Senior Creative Producer Charita Carter while Splash Mountain Imagineer Tony Baxter returned as a creative advisor.