Southern California’s premier theme park destination, the Disneyland Resort has just announced the upcoming opening date for the new Tiana’s Palace restaurant inside Disneyland Park. Resort representatives said the quick-service-style location will be opening to park guests on September 7, 2023.
The fresh dining concept is inspired by the restaurant that Tiana ultimately opened in the 2009 Walt Disney Animation Studios film “The Princess and the Frog”, a story set that plays out within the unique cultural and visual landscape of Louisiana’s renowned Crescent City.
Within just a few short weeks, Tiana’s Palace will start serving up delicious Southern-style dishes, inspired by Creole and Cajun cuisines, occupying the space within New Orleans Square that previously housed the French Market Restaurant. While new menu items will reflect Tiana’s tale, and embody the distinctive flair and flavors of New Orleans, the fan-favorite Mint Julep Bar will also be returning.
According to the official Disney Parks Blog, the design of Tiana’s restaurant in the “The Princess and the Frog” was borrowed directly from the look of Disneyland’s French Market Restaurant, although animators added a wheelhouse and two smokestacks to give Tiana’s eatery an iconic silhouette. So, when the time came to bring Tiana’s Palace to life inside the park, Imagineers sort of reverse-engineered the process, adding those details onto the real-life version.
The restaurant’s debut will mark the next stage of Disneyland’s planned infusion of Princess Tiana’s world into the park’s vibrant New Orleans Square area, which is home to such iconic attractions as Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion. The first stage of this storytelling transition began last year with the installation of Eudora’s Chic Boutique featuring Tiana’s Gourmet Secrets retail shop, tucked away on a little lane inside New Orleans Square.
The reimagined eatery will also complement the new Tiana’s Bayou Adventure attraction, which is replacing the Splash Mountain flume ride that has long sat just on the boundary of New Orleans Square and Critter Country. The floating-log ride’s transformation is currently underway at both Disneyland in Anaheim and Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom park in Orlando.
The attraction’s imminent overhaul was first announced in June 2020, and Disneyland’s Splash Mountain closed down in at the end of May 2023 following more than 33 years in operation. In its place, the new Tiana’s Bayou Adventure—which Charita Carter, Executive Creative Producer for Walt Disney Imagineering, described as “a love letter to New Orleans”—is set to open sometime in 2024.
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