Tiana's Bayou Adventure gets its opening date

Was nice getting to see the boats running and some music when I went a few weeks ago. Will probably need to wait at least a year to ride it, though.

Still upset the chances of the Voodoo spirits chanting “Are you ready?” on the lift hill is pretty much null at this point, though

I guess we'll only have a couple more months to wait to see if this retheme was worth it. Curious if they'll confirm the usage of Virtual Queue on this one as well or wait closer to opening to do so. Also, given the timeline on this project I think there's a very good chance Disneyland's version will have an October/November debut to kick off Disney's next fiscal year and provide needed capacity during the holidays.

So June 28th, possible "soft opening" first but sounds good.

AJ - I'm not sure if Tron can come off VQ yet, and don't think they want to operate 2 VQs in the same park. Personally, I don't think they'll need to utilize VQ on TBA, because while there will be a big push to ride when it opens, I don't think the demand will be any higher than it was during the hot summer months as Splash Mountain. While lines would regularly swell to 2 hours on those days, I think the park should be able to manage demand with Genie+/ILL than with VQ.

I still can't believe they completely missed the Memorial Day/end of school rush. While it's likely that they'll be soft opening this in mid-June and the official opening will be prior to the 4th of July, the official opening is going to miss 2 of the busiest weeks of the summer after most schools close in early/mid-June.

My front gate family member and my Tomorrowland family member both report healthy attendance at MKP. I'm sure Memorial Day Weekend crowds will still be very healthy.

The commercial's weird focus on a marching band, rather than the ride or the subject matter of the ride, is very strange.

Russell, what I heard is that they are planning to run both Tiana's and Tron as VQ attractions for the summer, then will likely drop Tron after that (and possibly Guardians, though that one is TBD). Guests will be able to join one attraction at the 7 A.M. drop and the other at the 1 P.M. drop (space available, of course), or purchase ILL to either attraction if unsuccessful.

Regarding necessity, nobody I've heard from thinks the crowd for Tiana's will be so much greater than it was for Splash Mountain that a VQ is truly necessary. However, it is supposedly policy for all E-ticket level attractions to open with the VQ & ILL setup moving forward, as while the VQ is sold to the public as a way to manage demand and prevent excessive queue times, it's actual purpose is to maximize the sale of ILL by manipulating supply. Thus, it's less about how well an attraction is operating and more about how much money Disney's making from ILL that determines the length over which a VQ is in place. Guardians and Tron both still have them over a year later because ILL sales remain strong at those attractions, while the similar capacity Runaway Railway at Disneyland dropped the VQ a couple months after opening (and switched to Genie+ after it's first summer) because locals simply weren't buying ILL more than once for the ride. Tiana's actually should have higher capacity than any of these attractions and be more reliable, thus rendering a VQ completely unnecessary for crowd management reasons, but being the newest attraction at the world's busiest theme park, I anticipate they'll be able to maintain strong ILL sales for it (and thus leave the VQ in place) for far longer than natural demand exists.

I feel like the last 4 years of my theme park fandom has largely been centered around the question, "Is TBA going to be good?"

Glad to be nearing an answer to this soon.

@AJ - If Disney is indeed leveraging VQ in order to generate revenue off of ILL, then that's pretty despicable IMHO.