It's kind of amazing how quickly the narrative around this ride turned around when they just started finishing and revealing the cool stuff they were building. I'm sure there was an audience out there for the (important! interesting in its own right!) narrative around this ride's backstory and its authenticity to the people and culture of New Orleans, but it was almost certainly not the right narrative with which to singularly pitch this particular ride.
Obviously, people would have different standards for, say, a Tropical Americas land being built in Animal Kingdom, where audiences expect cultural authenticity and find it a more integral aspect of that park's appeal.