Vice President of the Magic Kingdom, Melissa Valiquette, spoke to the Orlando Sentinel recently and addressed the future reimagining of Splash Mountain into a ride based on “The Princess and the Frog.”
Valiquette confirmed the reimagining is still in development, noting she is in “a lot of meetings” regarding the attraction. “That’s going to take some time, but the sequence of these things is that sometimes decisions can be made many, many months, even years before any of that will be seen on stage, so it’s going to take us a little bit of time to reimagine Splash Mountain,” she told the Sentinel.
As far as progress, Valiquette confided that “terrific work has been done including some selections around music around animatronics.”
The reimagining is part of the ongoing inclusivity changes around the Disney Parks (the most recent of which was the refurbishment of the Jungle Cruise). Splash Mountain is based on the controversial film “The Song of the South.” The development process reportedly began back in the summer of 2019, with the official announcement in 2020. Like the Jungle Cruise, the reimagining for Splash Mountain is planned for both Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resort.
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I was hoping that they gave up on this after getting virtue signal points after announcing during the summer of BLM.
Are they even bothering to twist themselves into pretzels to figure out how New Orleans is going to be shoehorned into Frontierland?
Splash Mountain is my favorite ride and I’m still super excited about this re-fit. It’s a match made in heaven. I just know it’s gonna be so good
This will be great ride for the princess and the Frog attraction! I can’t wait!
So pretty much they announced it on a whim without any planning
But the ride is so raaaacist that we will keep it open
I’m ok if they just stop talking about this. SM is arguably the most popular ride at MK. Give Tianna her own ride not a thrown together reface. It would be a net loss for all imo.
Still hate this and kept hoping it would go away. But i guess not. Nothing racist in the movie. Nothing remotely racist in the ride. Gross over-reaction for political correctness garbage. If I’m not mistaken, the ride usually has one of the longer wait times in the park and people of all races ride and enjoy it.
This is the absolute worst decision of all time!! Does Disney not see the consistently high wait times for Splash Mountain every single day? Not to mention the glaring issue of Louisiana not having any mountains?? This is so idiotic. All because of a few Twitter crybabies
If it makes any sense at all, it makes more sense at Disneyland. You’d have New Orleans Square, the old Haunted Mansion just outside of town and the Bayou (Splash Mountain / Princess & the Frog) right next to it before the tiny patch that is critter country – that could be re-named the Hundred Acre Wood at this point, with minor re-theming to the Hungry Bear Restaurant. In the Magic Kingdom you’d have Frontierland then a bayou then the desert (Big Thunder) . . just doesn’t fit. Now, maybe if you use some of Marc Davis’ old Western River Expedition show ideas and concepts you’d have something. A classic Imagineer’s ideas that were originally supposed to be in THAT park, not far from the area intended, that uses a water ride between Frontierland and Big Thunder to tie up the theming. And you get two DIFFERENT ride experiences. Not unlike the variations on Tower of Terror. Gives people another reason to visit both parks.
If only today’s Imagineering used a little more imagination.
Why can’t they just leave things alone!😡 this whole offending people thing is getting over rated!!!!! How about the people who don’t want splash Mountain changed, how about that half of America!
I love Princess and the frog attraction it’s going to be my favorite ride!
Disney doesn’t even acknowledge that most people are against this. The petition to save Splash Mountain has six times as many signatures as the one that caused this.