I'm excited, nervous and have some concerns.
The Princess and the Frog deserves a ride. It should have had a ride years ago when the movie was released. The film's music is fantastic, Tiana is an amazing role model and the movie means a great deal to a lot of people. However, I would have preferred the film get a made-from-scratch dark ride in the Fantasyland area of the park with Ariel, Belle, and the others. That's where the movie belongs thematically in Magic Kingdom.
Disneyland is another story.
I'm also concerned about the height requirements. Splash Mountain has a height requirement of 40 inches. Most kids don't reach that height until age 5. Are they missing their target demographic for a princess ride?
With that said, I'm hopeful that current Disney management will put the needed resources into this retheme. I hope they 'Dig a Little Deeper' into those pockets for this reimagine. I'll be highly disappointed if it's full of screens and the numerous existing animatronics are ripped out. I thought the "all new music" announcement was unnecessary. The film's soundtrack is amazing. Keep it.
And I would like the firefly scene even though Ray is gone and this "adventure" occurs post-film.
From a capacity standpoint, it's going to be difficult to bring down Splash Mountain for an entire year to reimagine. Tron will be online, but it's much less capacity than Splash Mountain and less accessible to families with children.
MK is so crowded as it is. Taking a high-capacity ride like Splash down for a long period of time is going to make it even worse. It will be interesting to see what they attempt to do to mitigate that.
But, I'm still excited.
On a side note, Louis is one of my favorite Disney characters and I hope they do him justice. Fun fact—he was animated by Eric Goldberg who also did the Genie from Aladdin. Probably the reason I like him so much.
