Views of Splash Mountain are seen at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Fla., on July 23, 2020. Following controversy, Splash Mountain is now closed for redesign and can reopen as Tiana’s Bayou Adventure in late 2024.

Bryan R. Smith/AFP by way of Getty Images

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Bryan R. Smith/AFP by way of Getty Images

Views of Splash Mountain are seen at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Fla., on July 23, 2020. Following controversy, Splash Mountain is now closed for redesign and can reopen as Tiana’s Bayou Adventure in late 2024.

Bryan R. Smith/AFP by way of Getty Images

Fans had one remaining run down Splash Mountain in Florida’s Disney World on Sunday, earlier than it closed for good. It had been in operation since 1992.

Renovations on Splash Mountain, which many followers take into account a Disney staple, started on Monday. Disney introduced in June 2020 that it was planning to reimagine the journey after rising complaints because of its associations with the 1946 movie Song of the South, specifically a Change.org petition with over 21,000 signatures stating that the journey is “steeped in extremely problematic and stereotypical racist tropes.”

The Splash Mountain at California’s Disneyland, which opened in 1989, can be slated to shut quickly, although the precise date has not but been introduced. Both of the rides will reopen as Tiana’s Bayou Adventure – that includes Disney’s first Black princess – in late 2024.

Statements across the redesign haven’t talked about the model of the journey in Japan, which additionally launched in 1992.

On Sunday, followers of Splash Mountain waited upwards of three hours to take their remaining run, and wait occasions had been larger than common for the previous month, in accordance with Thrill Data. Some followers expressed disapproval of the journey’s closure and started a petition to avoid wasting the journey, to no avail. Splash Mountain has already been faraway from Disney World’s web site.

The controversy over Splash Mountain stemmed from the film it was based mostly on. Song of the South is about on a Georgia plantation after the Civil War and depicts what the NAACP in 1946 known as an “idyllic master-slave relationship which is a distortion of the facts.” Its characters appeared as animatronics in Splash Mountain, which additionally featured songs from the movie.

The new journey shall be based mostly on The Princess and the Frog, the 2009 animated film that debuted Tiana, the first Black Disney princess. In 2020, Disney CEO Bob Iger introduced that Song of the South wouldn’t be obtainable for streaming on Disney Plus and that the film is “not appropriate in today’s world.”

The redesign is a continuation of Disney’s “longstanding history of updating attractions and adding new magic,” in accordance with the original announcement, and the brand new journey shall 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.”