Disneyland announces closing date for Splash Mountain
ANAHEIM, Calif. - Fans have just over a month to say goodbye to Splash Mountain at Disneyland in Anaheim. The iconic ride, which opened in 1989, will close on May 31, Disneyland officials announced on Wednesday.
The last day Splash Mountain will be in operation will be on May 30.
The ride will undergo an extensive reimaging process and will reopen as Tiana's Bayou Adventure – featuring Disney's first Black princess – in late 2024. The new ride will be based on the 2009 animated film "The Princess and the Frog," which debuted Tiana, the first Black Disney princess.
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The redesign is a continuation of Disney's "longstanding history of updating attractions and adding new magic," according to the original announcement, and the new ride will be "one that all of our guests can connect with and be inspired by, and it speaks to the diversity of the millions of people who visit our parks each year."
The Splash Mountain ride in Florida's Disney World closed in January.
The Disney World ride, which first opened in 1992, closed after it was announced in 2020 that Disney had plans to "reimagine" the ride after numerous complaints due to its associations with the 1946 movie "Song of the South."
With racist stereotypes and Old South tropes, "Song of the South" is a mix of live-action, cartoons and music featuring an old Black plantation laborer named Uncle Remus who enchants a white city boy with fables of talking animals.
Groups including the NAACP protested the film’s initial release. The NAACP in 1946 called it an "idyllic master-slave relationship which is a distortion of the facts." Its characters appeared as animatronics in Splash Mountain, which also featured songs from the film.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.