Original Article By “WDWPro” At ThatParkPlace.com:
Lookout, Harmonious. Get out of the way, Galactic Starcruiser. There’s a new champion of Disney Parks disgust and it’s name is Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. Despite what you might hear on some other sites or on Disney-approved media outlets, the backlash to the Splash Mountain replacement is here and it is gargantuan. In fact, I would say it’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen in my years of covering Disney World and Disneyland.
It’s likely Disney knew they were in very hot water. The company released a “POV” ride-thru on YouTube before any YouTubers and/or vloggers had an opportunity to “be the first”. That might have been an attempt to get ahead of negative press. It did not work.
The video has since been ratioed with dislikes and the comments on the video are even worse. With the video existing on YouTube — where the general public will watch it rather than just heavy-dosage Disney fans — the reaction has been overwhelmingly negative in a way that is unprecedented. Even finding a positive comment is difficult. We’ve currently estimated the ratio of positive-to-negative comments at something like 1-to-200. Yes, it’s that bad.
This has not stopped, however, defenders from attempting to sway public opinion in favor of Disney’s new ride.
Meanwhile, it’s not just the public reception of the ride that might be going poorly. Despite the attraction being a “reskin” of Splash Mountain, somehow the downtime for the log flume during press and influencer previews has been atrocious. Repeatedly the attraction has had fire alarms going off and previews for the entire remainder of the day were cancelled on June 2nd. On June 3rd, those attempting to ride reported that the attraction was down for three hours at one point and eventually had to be fully evacuated again.
Meanwhile, those who did manage to get on the ride during the preview days thus far were met with “unexpected results”. When the ride wasn’t suffering from fire alarms, evacuations and downtime, the very expensive animatronics were already malfunctioning. In the following video, Theme Park Reviews discovered that the very first Louis animatronic already has his mouth not opening at all. Because these are brand-new animatronics just delivered from California, this really can’t be blamed on maintenance. These have apparently already arrived in a fragile state.
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