Tiana’s Tunnel of Terror
“WE ARE SORRY BUT WE ARE UNABLE TO CONTINUE OUR ADVENTURE ON TIANA’S…”
Tiana’s Biayu Adventure is now officially a black eye for Disney. The beloved Splash Mountain has been reimagined into a ride that is, to put it mildly, “troubled.”
It’s breaking down constantly. Emergency evacuations are now a daily occurrence, the animatronics, what few there are, simply do not work reliably. Now the screens are failing.
What has gone wrong?
Honestly, the reason is pretty simple. The DEI Imagineers have no idea what they are doing.
Here are the basics. A problem is a problem you can do something about. A condition is a problem you can NOT do anything about. The conditions inside of the Splash Mountain attraction are and have always been, extremely hot and exceptionally humid. The mold will get everywhere it can. While the black slime can be scrubbed off of visible surfaces, it’s going to get everywhere else. Disney World was built on a swamp.
1980s Imagineers accounted for this in their designs. Animatronics that were built around hydraulics could function in that environment, which is what they used. Now Brer Rabbit and company did have to run pretty much continuously and moving parts that are always in motion are going to experience wear and eventual failure but they held out for decades.
However, the new Tiana-era animatronics have called it a day after four weeks.
The condition in this case is that this new generation of animatronics are electro-mechanical. That’s right, Tiana and Louis are animated by electrical servo motors, in that humid, perpetually damp, and eternally wet environment. Given the number of emergency evacuations they are having, they must have equipment that is overheating enough to set off smoke detectors. Louis is only ever partially animate and Tiana is constantly in “T-mode.”
And to top it all off the screens are failing too. Nobody really likes TVs on a dark ride, it shows a serious lack of effort on Imagineering’s part, but it’s a Chapek-era innovation that has proven itself too cost-effective to discontinue now that he’s gone. And at the end of the day, it’s the easiest way for DEImagineering to get something done.
But not in a sauna-like Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.
Imagineering used to do all of this in-house but they’ve long since reached the point in their degeneration that they have to outsource. This did work for the Frozen reskinning of Maelstrom in the Norway pavilion. But that flume ride is entirely indoors. It’s completely climate-controlled.
I suspect the Splash Mountain reskin going on at Disneyland in California will go better because that climate is a lot drier.
At least Tokyo Disneyland now has a very solid argument the next time Burbank tries to pressure them into reskinning the last Splash Mountain.
