Race is at the center of the dramatic transformation of Disney’s popular Splash Mountain ride, which was based on the 1946 movie “Song of the South.” The film, long beloved by many white Disney fans but deeply offensive to many African Americans, became a new water ride on Friday, featuring the studio’s first African American princess.

The made-over log flume ride now is called Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, based on the 2009 animated feature “The Princess and the Frog.” Set in New Orleans’s French Quarter, the movie focused on voodoo as a central narrative component. Years in the making, the new ride cost an estimated $150 million.

Splash Mountain drew criticism for its connection to “The Song of the South.” The film presented an idealized, historically inaccurate portrayal of African Americans in the region before and after the Civil War. It was also criticized for its cultural appropriation — the white 19th-century author Joel Chandler Harris first heard many of the Black folktales about Br’er Rabbit that informed his novel in a Georgia plantation cabin that housed enslaved people. Disney withdrew the film from circulation in 1986.

Discussion of the ride’s new incarnation has so far — justly — focused on the dramatic racial symbolism for Disney theme parks. While it is the first Disney theme park ride based on an African American character, it may also represent a retrospective effort to sanitize “The Princess and the Frog.”

© The Hill