I agree with this for sure. I feel Disney and most of the Disney channels are going about this whole thing in a weirdly political way when they just don’t have to at all. It isn’t unusual or unreasonable for a ride to get a new overlay, especially when the subject matter is outdated or the ride is not working functionally. Splash Mountain suffers in both of these areas.
We had a copy of the VHS of Song of The South and I saw it many times as a kid. I do not remember anything about it because it just was not good enough to remember even what the plot was about and I feel most people would say the same thing, so the subject matter is definitely dated. I cross trained at Splash Mountain and the ride itself has a LOT of problems. It broke down constantly, there were water leaks constantly, there were issues with guests taking inappropriate photos on the drop etc. Also, when you do the big drop and go around the corner there’s one more small drop because Disney used 2 different contractors at the same time to get the ride built faster - that spot is where the 2 sides met up….and they didn’t match. So they had to put in the worlds smallest drop. This is a good chance to correct a lot of the issues that this ride had. While I don’t think Princess and the Frog is the best IP Disney has, I think it’s a lot more popular than Song of the South and fits the theme of ‘frontier’ at least as good as Splash Mountain since neither has anything to do with the Frontier.
There are a ton of justifiable reasons for this change that have nothing to do with politics, but it does feel that the underlying opinions of these types of shows bases mostly around their personal political stances and that’s just really bizarre for me.
This overlay feels better in my opinion than Maelstroms because World Showcase is intended to be a look into the cultures, lore and experiences of the host country. Frontierland is already a hodgepodge and Disney openly admits this because cast members at Country Bear, TSI and Splash all wear the same costume but Big Thunder Mountain has a different costume because it takes place in Utah whereas the others take place near the Mississippi River which is not really the frontier as we know it.
it’s always sad when a ride that brought us a lot of great memories closes down. Splash Mountain was a ride I wouldn’t do the first few times I went to Disneyland because I was too afraid. As an adult it’s the ride that I had to hop off of once because I got a phone call as I was getting on the ride (ironically it was from Pete who I had never met at that time) and the friend I had to ditch on the ride was just going to go alone but 1 member of a huge group from Brazil got confused and jumped on the ride with her. So we have a photo of my whole friend group and 1 random Brazilian guy who got on the wrong log and couldn’t understand that his family wasn’t on it. Everyone has their stories and memories and it’s worth respecting when someone is sad that a change is happening.