Walt Disney World Updates Native American Characters in Peter Pan Ride

Walt Disney World has made some changes to Peter Pan’s Flight, a ride that has been around since 1955 at Disneyland, with the company planning to carry the changes over the the older ride soon. The “tribe scene,” in which Tiger Lily and a number of Native Americans were seated alongside a chief while braves played drums, has been updated. The headress-wearing chief has been removed, and the war paint has disappeared from the rest of the tribe members, who are now wearing more period-accurate Native American clothing. Tiger Lily and her mom are now standing and dancing, rather than seated beside the men.

The Disney podcast Chip & Company (via Deadline) got the first look online. You can see it below.

Disney told Deadline that they are constantly taking feedback, and that when an opportunity arises to make their attractions “more authentic and relatable,” they ty to take it. The changes made the the ride apparently took about a month to implement, during which time Peter Pan’s Flight was closed. Disney has not said when the Disneyland version will get its facelift.

While Disney’s Peter Pan has been beloved by fans for generations, even in the early 20th Century, some were critical of the scene featuring Tiger Lily and her fellow “Picaninnies”(what the characters were called in J.M. Barrie’s original novel). Per a 2014 article by Smithsonian Magazine, Barrie’s depiction of the Picaninnies was already being criticized by the time Peter Pan came out in theaters.

Recently, Disney unveiled Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, an update of their fan-favorite Splash Mountain attraction. Removing elements from Song of the South, a movie Disney took out of circulation decades ago, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure replaced those elements with characters and story beats from The Princess and the Frog.

 After years of being lobbied by a small but dedicated number of fans to remove the ride’s Song of the South characters and theming — the film contains numerous racist caricatures of Black people and has been all but disavowed by Disney, with no official release in decades — the company finally made the move after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd sparked a nationwide conversation about how pervasive racism is in everyday American life. The new ride is already in place at Walt Disney World, with the Tiana’s Bayou Adventure update slated to hit Disneyland in November.

Before the ride was opened in 1989, then-CEO Michael Eisner, who had already started distancing the company from Song of the South, didn’t like the original, planned name (the Zip-A-Dee River Run) and wanted to tie the ride to Splash, the hugely successful 1984 film in which Tom Hanks falls in love with a mermaid played by Daryl Hannah. Eisner’s note was mostly ignored, except for the name change, but it seems likely that the Zip-A-Dee name and the more explicit ties to Song of the South might have hastened changes to the ride. On the other hand, if they had more fully embraced Splash, it likely would have been changed much sooner, since while the film remains loved by many, it’s hardly thought of in the same way that Disney’s animated classics are.