What’s Happening with Splash Mountain?
Mystery is afoot at Walt Disney World.
Mysterious structures have appeared at a beloved attraction. Is this the sign of minor changes in place, or is something more dramatic in progress?
What’s happening with Splash Mountain? Read on to learn everything we know.
What We Know
Disney theme parks have hidden many secrets during the pandemic. The new regime at The Walt Disney Company keeps its cards close to the vest.
So, we’re never quite sure when something counts as happenstance versus the start of a new endeavor.
To wit, Disneyland reopened without Jungle Cruise. Instead, Imagineers took the extra time to perfect the new version of the ride, one with different set pieces.
At Magic Kingdom, park officials took the unusual approach of rebuilding the ride on the fly. As a result, jungle Cruise has yet to close down for renovations.
Instead, cast members work throughout the night and behind the scenes to upgrade the ride to its next iteration. Disney can do that, but it usually doesn’t.
For this reason, a recent surprise at Splash Mountain left us confused, perplexed, and seeking answers.
Scaffolding appeared on the man-made mountain last week. Disney prefers to keep its repairs and renovations away from the public eye.
After all, when you notice scaffolding, you’ve broken the illusion that you’re at Splash Mountain. Instead, you’re in a construction zone. It’s not very Disney.
On the flip side, theme park workers are currently in a mad scramble to complete countless renovations and enhancements by October 1st.
On that date, the tourist world will turn its eye to Walt Disney World as it celebrates its 50th birthday.
Sadly, the pandemic and resulting staff reductions have caused a deadline crunch.
In the short term, Disney may just have to ignore standard practices to give itself the best chance of meeting that October 1st date.
Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.
Other Recent Developments
On its own, the presence of scaffolding wouldn’t mean anything, especially not with the 50th-anniversary deadline only a few weeks away.
However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Splash Mountain has experienced three incidents over the past week.
Here’s MickeyBlog talking about the ride’s unexpected downtime on August 4th.
On this date, Disney drained the water out of the flume, which is to say they took the proverbial splash out of the mountain.
The ride was operational the next day, but another oddity occurred on August 7th.
MickeyBlog captured a video of the abandoned waters. What happened was that another issue forced the automatic shutdown routine.
Cast members had to perform an evacuation of riders on the boats, which is never good. It’s something of a last resort at Disney.
Remarkably, Splash Mountain suffered another incident two days later, on August 9th. After a mere half-hour in operation, it closed again.
I should mention another essential fact here. During the first incident, MickeyBlog snagged a photo of cast members with repair equipment.
These individuals had grabbed the heavy machinery and taken it to Splash Mountain. That’s another sign that the problems exist behind the scenes.
The obvious conclusion here is that Splash Mountain is suffering from technical problems, which is understandable.
When the pandemic started, this ride had only returned from its annual renovations about a month before that.
As such, Disney didn’t perform the usual winter refurb in 2021. In fact, management might have believed there was no need. After all…
The TBD Re-Theme Date
Disney recently announced that Splash Mountain will receive a full re-theming to The Princess and the Frog.
Nobody expected that to happen immediately, though.
On the other hand, executives recently added the Fifth Key of Inclusion to employee training handbooks.
The current leadership team feels strongly that all connections to Song of the South make Splash Mountain an innately flawed attraction.
Also, the public spotlight will focus on Walt Disney World yet again.
Understandably, Disney doesn’t want any negative stigmas providing clickbait material. You remember the Snow White’s Happily Ever After nonsense, right?
When Walt Disney World reopened, memes lit up social media. They assailed Disney for operating during a pandemic.
The lack of COVID-19 outbreaks traced to Disney theme parks didn’t receive anywhere near the attention, which speaks volumes about how the internet works.
So, Disney must prepare for its park’s 50th birthday as if some ruthless attention-seekers will make a big deal out of Song of the South.
That’s particularly troublesome in combination with the Inclusion prioritization.
As such, I cannot rule out the possibility that Disney meant it when park officials indicated that a re-theming would happen soon.
That seems crazy to me, as crowds over the next 20 months should break attendance records or, at the very least, revenue ones.
Taking down a top-tier attraction like Splash Mountain right now would add pressure on other rides. Their wait times would increase accordingly.
As everyone knows, longer wait times mean less happy guests.
Displeased tourists mean poor survey results, and Disney cares about survey scores more than almost anything.
So, something’s gotta give.
Disney either bites the bullet and re-themes now at the cost of lower survey scores. Or, it takes the social media beating for operating Splash Mountain after promising the re-theme.
Speculation about Splash Mountain
Nobody outside of Disney knows for sure what’s going on here.
However, I think Occam’s Razor applies here. Splash Mountain is an old ride that skipped (at least most of) its annual refurbishment cycle this year.
On top of that, the understaffed attraction probably hasn’t had the same level of maintenance reporting.
These issues are understandable given the pandemic. If they’re the source of trouble, technical problems are causing repeated incidents.
I should add that this wouldn’t be the first recent example, either. Remember that the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover went through something similar.
That attraction actually went down for repairs before the pandemic. It then didn’t reopen for nearly a year after Magic Kingdom did.
Fixing an attraction isn’t always a straightforward process. If it were, the Disco Yeti would have stopped dancing and switched back to A-Mode years ago.
Even so, we’re all warily keeping an eye on the Parks Blog and Disney’s social media.
Even if Disney hadn’t planned to re-theme to The Princess and the Frog, serious technical issues with Splash Mountain could force the matter.
I mean, if the ride needs to shut down for an extended period anyway, they might as well just go ahead and kill two birds with one stone, right?
I don’t think that’s where we’re at with this, but it’s curious enough to monitor.
FWIW, Melissa Valiquette, vice president of Magic Kingdom, recently performed a podcast with employees of the Orlando Sentinel.
During the interview, she stated the following:
“Sometimes, decisions can be made many months and even years before any of it will be seen on stage. So, it’s going to take us a little bit of time to reimagine Splash Mountain.”
So, that sounds like it’s not in the offing, but…