Videos show Disney World fans waiting hours in line to ride Splash Mountain on the day it closed
Amanda Krause/Insider
- Fans rode Disney World's controversial log-flume ride Splash Mountain for the last time on Sunday.
- Videos posted to social media show huge crowds of Disney fans waiting hours to ride it.
- The ride is now being turned into Tiana's Bayou Adventure, inspired by "The Princess and the Frog."
Diehard Disney fans said goodbye to the controversial theme-park attraction Splash Mountain by waiting hours in line for one last ride.
In a viral TikTok video posted by undefined, countless parkgoers can be seen crowding around Splash Mountain at Disney World's Magic Kingdom for a final ride on Sunday before it closed.
The line wrapped around the ride and through Frontierland, with Disney employees seen in the background attempting to control the crowd.
The TikTok has now been viewed more than 2.4 million times as of Tuesday. LakeBuenaVisitors did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
According to the theme-park bloggers, those in the crowd waited more than five hours to ride the attraction.
But Thrill Data, a website that tracks theme-park wait times, says the all-time high on Sunday was 220 minutes. The previous record for the ride was 210 minutes in 2020, according to the site.
Another video shared by WDW News Today shows parkgoers rushing to the ride as soon as the theme park opened.
—WDW News Today (@WDWNT) January 22, 2023
Splash Mountain was first introduced at Disney World in 1992 after debuting at Disneyland in California in 1989.
As the theme park's website previously stated, the log-flume ride took parkgoers through "a colorful Southern bayou" while following Br'er Rabbit on his search for his "laughing place" and escape from enemies Br'er Bear and Br'er Fox.
The characters and scenery stem from Disney's 1946 film "Song of the South," which follows a former slave who is shown living happily on his former master's plantation. The movie has not been made available to stream on Disney Plus.
Many Disney fans have argued for years that the ride was offensive. One fan even started a petition in June 2020 asking Disney to revamp the attraction with a new movie theme — preferably "The Princess and the Frog," which features Disney's first Black princess. That same month, Disney confirmed it would be re-theming the ride.
John Raoux/AP
Disneyland's Splash Mountain is still running, and an opening date for Tiana's Bayou Adventure — as Splash Mountain will be renamed — has not been announced, though it's slated to be sometime in 2024.
Disney has shared that the ride will follow Princess Tiana, Naveen, and Louis as they sail through a Mardi Gras celebration. New music inspired by the film will also be played throughout the log-flume attraction.