Earlier this month, it looked like reliability for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was improving, with the attraction experiencing considerably less downtime than it did during the previews. From the outside looking in, it appeared that crews had cracked the code, and that the attraction would be reliable moving forward. I even thought that Disney would be ok to move forward with opening up the traditional standby queue for the ride. As it turns out, the ride has been having some struggles as of late, and it just had its worst day yet.

Before we talk about the past week, we’ll talk about yesterday. In short, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure processed the fewest number of Boarding Groups that it has ever processed since the ride opened more than three weeks ago. According to information from thrill-data, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure processed just 59 Boarding Groups on July 20th. The previous low was 81 Boarding Groups back on June 30th, or 80 Boarding Groups on June 18th if you want to count previews.

Yesterday, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure closed for the day at 4:30pm – roughly 5.5 hours before the park closed. There was a brief closure of outdoor attractions yesterday for inclement weather, but that appeared to only be for roughly 30 minutes or so around 6:45pm. One caveat to the poor Tiana’s Bayou Adventure stats is that Big Thunder Mountain appears to have never reopened after the 6:45pm weather closure. It’s unclear if that closure is specific to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad or if it’s part of a wider area problem including Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.

Regardless, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was closed for more than two hours prior to the weather delay, and reports on the ground said that the attraction was drained for the evening. Not great. Of course, one bad day doesn’t mean that any ride is struggling, per se. To determine reliability, we should try to paint a bigger picture.

Over the past week, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure has been operational at park opening one time. That’s not great and that alone would disqualify it from moving to a traditional standby queue anytime soon. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is a headliner attraction, and if your headliner cannot consistently be open at rope drop, it should not utilize a standby queue. As I’m writing this article, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is still not open for the day.

While yesterday was its worst day as a whole, July 16th was the worst start to a day that Tiana’s Bayou Adventure ever had. On the 16th, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure did not open until 1:15pm. That’s more than four hours of downtime to start the day. Again, inconsistency and unreliability will be what keeps Tiana’s Bayou Adventure utilizing Virtual Queue far longer than Disney World originally intended.

I think it’s obvious, but at least worth pointing out, that Disney World did not plan on using the Virtual Queue this long. Prior to opening the ride, Disney World said that they would be utilizing a Virtual Queue during “initial opening days”. The ride opened on June 28th, so my thought was that they would want to use the Virtual Queue through the July 4th holiday at the longest if crowds materialized. As it turns out, crowds were low again this year for the Fourth of July (and Disney probably already knew that would happen), so there was little reason to keep the Virtual Queue from a crowd perspective.

At this point, the attraction needs to keep the Virtual Queue until it is reliable. With the Virtual Queue, Disney World can manage guest expectations by slowing down the Boarding Group callback times if the ride is having operational struggles. If 15,000 people per day are riding Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, Disney World can use the Boarding Groups to make sure that they are spaced out throughout the day instead of surging at rope drop (when the attraction may not even be open) or at busy peaks during the afternoon.

I’ll close by saying this: I didn’t want to write another article about Tiana’s Bayou Adventure reliability. Instead, I’d love nothing more than for the next article I write to be about Disney opening up the traditional standby queue and the attraction settling into a good operational flow. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. Disney World has previously announced that Tiana’s Bayou Adventure would open up the standby queue for Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, but that’s probably less of a comment on attraction reliability and more of a comment about crowd levels and desire to ride attractions during a party where there is so much more to do.

Hopefully Disney World is able to figure out the ride issues for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure soon, but three weeks on with no obvious improvement likely signals that the issues are a bit more complex than a quick fix would allow for.

As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!