10/23/2026
🐸 One scene on Tiana’s Bayou Adventure reveals the hidden challenge with every Disney ride retheme.
I call it the bones.
When Imagineers can create a ride from the ground up, they can closely integrate the story with the actual physical movement, like how a ride vehicle moves at a certain moment of the story. But for a retheme, the bones of the ride are set: the layout, the pacing, and the movement.
And these bones can be inflexible, like when they rethemed Splash Mountain into Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.
In Splash Mountain, the climax of the ride is the climax of the story. Br’er Rabbit is captured, the lift hill is full of dread, and as he’s thrown into the Briar Patch, you take the plunge as well. The ride has you experience what’s happening in the story both emotionally and physically.
Now, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure: The scene before the lift hill is supposed to make you feel like you’re shrunk down to the size of a frog. But the physical space of this scene (what used to be the Laughin’ Place) is pretty confined, so Imagineers are limited with how much they can play with scale. A whole section that’s supposed to make you feel small doesn’t fully get there.
And then there’s the drama. Because Tiana’s Bayou Adventure doesn’t have an antagonist, there’s nothing to feel dread about. So the lift hill just kinda happens. And the drop is Mama Odie making you big again. But there’s not that physical connection between dropping and becoming bigger. The movement and the story are disconnected.
I’ve heard multiple people say they made the last drop smaller for Tiana. That’s factually wrong. It’s the same 52-foot drop it’s always been. But emotionally, it’s right. Without the dread and the buildup, the big climax of the ride doesn’t feel nearly as big.
The retheme is fighting with the bones of the old ride.
Other rethemes handle the old ride’s bones much better, like Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout. I break this down in depth in my full video essay: The Problem with Disney Ride Rethemes.
So which retheme do you think works with its bones the best? Let me know. 🏰
