Last year was a big one for Disney Parks, as both Walt Disney World and Disneyland unveiled Tiana’s Bayou Adventure: a rethemed and resigned version of Splash Mountain. While the attraction had to deal with more than its share of controversy, it has to be seen as a big win overall, as most guests to the parks seem to love it. However, that doesn’t mean that everything about Tiana’s Bayou Adventure has been perfect. The newest ride at Disney World is having some problems.
A new video on TikTok is going viral that shows at least one piece of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is quite literally coming apart at the seams. Specifically, the seam between the head and neck of one of the Louis the alligator animatronics has ripped away, leaving a gash in the gator that doesn’t look great. Check it out below:
@brandon.paints.the.parks Still rode it twice 🤙🏽🤙🏽🐊
♬ original sound - Brandon Paints the Parks
The video has since been reposted to Twitter, and as one of the comments there says “Mistakes were made.” It’s suggested that the reason for the animatronic wearing out so quickly (it has been running for less than nine months at this point) is that felt was used for Louis’ skin rather than some form of rubber or latex – which would likely be more resilient, and might more adequately resemble the skin of an alligator anyway.
On the one hand, the fact that the material of the animatronic is wearing out isn’t that big a shock considering what it goes through for hours at a time in an environment full of water. The Tiana's Bayou Adventure audio-animatronics are incredible pieces of technology, but with all that new capability comes an X-factor since a lot of this hasn't been done before.
At the same time, one hopes that all that was taken into account when the system was designed. The fact that only this one animatronic seems to be having this issue may indicate some unique flaw in the material. Still, fixing it is likely to be an expensive process. It’s hard to guess if this is something that could be fixed overnight or if the whole animatronic would need to be removed.
It wouldn’t be the first time that a significant flaw had been discovered only after a major attraction had been opened to the public. Rise of the Resistance at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge has three large blasters that were designed to move, but have been non-functional for the majority of the attraction’s existence at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Clearly there was something wrong with the original design. The blasters were recently repaired at Disneyland to much fanfare. The blasters are still non-functional in Florida, but a fix there soon seems likely.
One wonders if something like this may be what happens to Louis. We could see some attempts at short-term fixes, but odds are something like this will take more significant work to truly update. Fixing the damage might simply lead to it happening again in another nine months. As such, we could see a damaged Louis in the attraction long term until they’re able to deal with whatever is causing the damage.
It will be interesting to see if something similar happens at Disneyland. Tiana's Bayou Adventure opened at Magic Kingdom first. The Disneyland version opened about five months later. By that measure, if this is some sort of design flaw it could show itself on the other attraction this summer.
While there's a lot planned at Disney World in 2025, what there isn't is a massive new attraction. The biggest new ride is an update to Test Track at Epcot. As such, perhaps fixing Louis will be a focus sooner rather than later.
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