Earlier this week, Disneyland opened a traditional standby queue for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. The change came some three weeks after the attraction officially opened in the renamed Bayou Country section of Walt’s park. Disneyland moving away from Virtual Queue in such a “short” amount of time represents an accomplishment for the park as Walt Disney World continues to operate a Virtual Queue with no announced end date in sight.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure Virtual Queue at Magic Kingdom
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure officially opened at Magic Kingdom on June 28, 2024. During the pre-opening announcement period, Walt Disney World said that the attraction would operate with a Virtual Queue when it debuted, but that they had plans to drop the Virtual Queue shortly thereafter. In fact, the following verbiage is still present on the Walt Disney World website for the Tiana’s Bayou Adventure Virtual Queue:
“A standby queue will not be available during the attraction’s initial opening days”
It’s been 170 days since Tiana’s Bayou Adventure officially opened at Magic Kingdom and the Virtual Queue is still in operation – certainly longer than the “initial opening days”.
Looking at downtime data from thrill-data, there wasn’t a huge difference between Disneyland’s version of the attraction and Walt Disney World’s version in terms of averages. That said, there has been a steady improvement for Disneyland’s version in terms of boarding groups processed and Lightning Lane availability. Data for Walt Disney World shows that the attraction is still incredibly inconsistent, perhaps leading to a lack of confidence by the operations team.
In fact, if we look at the Boarding Group progression rate per day, it looks like there is almost a pattern between a good day and a bad day at Tiana’s Bayou Adventure in Magic Kingdom. One day, the attraction will be processing 10-14 groups per hour, and the next day that progression rate will be cut in half. The attraction is almost impressively, consistently inconsistent.

Another data point appears to show the regression in reliability for Walt Disney World’s newest attraction. In the graph below, we can see “percentage of day closed” tracked. As you can see, there has been a recent uptick in the amount of downtime that Walt Disney World’s version of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure has been experiencing. The attraction appeared to be operating its best during September before starting to become more unreliable over the last 45 days or so.

The regression in reliability comes at a terrible time. Not only are crowds getting larger due to the holiday season, but Frontierland is going to be leaning pretty hard on Tiana’s Bayou Adventure once Big Thunder Mountain Railroad closes for over a year starting in early January.
I’m sure that the operations team wanted to get Tiana’s Bayou Adventure standby opened by the time that Big Thunder Mountain Railroad closed. If Disney can get Tiana’s Bayou Adventure standby open by the time that Big Thunder closes, there might be some relief offered in terms of Frontierland crowds if they’re given a standby line to wait in instead of other attractions or walking spaces.
On the other hand, perhaps January is the perfect time to open standby, whether the attraction is reliable or not. Colder temperatures historically result in shorter lines for water rides. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for Splash Mountain to close for a month-long refurbishment during the coldest months of the year. It’s unclear if Tiana’s Bayou Adventure will follow the same annual refurbishment pattern or not, but nothing has been announced yet.
There is no end in sight for the Tiana’s Bayou Adventure Virtual Queue at Magic Kingdom despite promises of a short run for the Virtual Queue to manage initial demand. Unfortunately, the unreliability that we flagged during early previews of the attraction persists more than 6 months later.

Whatever is plaguing the attraction is clearly not an easy or simple fix. We hope that Walt Disney Imagineers are able to get the attraction back on track and that Magic Kingdom operations are able to open standby sooner rather than later – especially as we look forward to the 1,000th day of Virtual Queue use over at Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind in EPCOT this upcoming February.

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!