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Tarzan was good but not great.

I think you are confusing Tarzan as the end of the era of great Disney films with the end of the 90's/20th century.

For one, Mulan was the last Disney movie to be a full length musical...not Tarzan. Except for one or two songs Tarzan was full of Phil Collins song montages...not character/plot driven songs sung by the actual characters in the movie.

Also, in terms of quality, I would consider both Emperor and Fantasia 2000 (it's immediate successors) better than Tarzan.

AND also important Wreck-it-Ralph (the most recent film from the Walt Disney Animation Studio canon) was better than Tarzan as well.

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"Live every week like it's Shark Week."

This movie has aged well over the years. Not only because it has a special place in my childhood, and also signaled the end of the Disney renaissance. I wish Disney movies could be this great, but there are some exceptions - such as Tangled, which surprised me entirely and made me feel awe, because I loved it and it made me remember the older days - that do make me feel happy, and remember Disney is still there and creating the magic it does so well. I do miss the hand-drawn animation. I love the CGI movies, but I also feel that at first for me they were distracting due to how many details were given in the movie. Tangled's hair distracted me at first, then I feel like they are made of clay...and find it a bit hard to follow. But I am warming up to the change of CGI animation, which I think if Frozen does hold up to how I imagine, it could herald the start of a second Disney renaissance because Tangled was amazing...so I can only imagine how great it may also be.

I totally agree with you. Tarzan definitely marks the end for the Disney renaissance. Evan though I really like emperor's new groove it is undoubtedly a departure from the classic Disney formula. Every movie after Tarzan set out to be something different from the established formula.

"Tarzan" is truly one last of it's kind, no matter how you put it. The nineties were a Golden Age for Disney (and animation in general) where Disney made some truly captivating and enchanting animated features and despite how the Renaissance is individually perceived (since "Pocahontas" was seen as the downfall and the following films as inferior to their predecessors), at least most of them managed to be very compelling and good in their own way (despite that I highly detested "Hercules" when I first saw it and couldn't care less for "Beauty and the Beast"). Though "Tarzan" is perhaps not my all time favorite of the nineties, at least it had some components to it that were truly great at it's very best. So "Tarzan", regardless of it's faults (it's blatant, juvenile comedy and contrived plot device with hunters), was truly a film that is an equal to the greatness that Disney put in the Renaissance era and officially ended it. It had the certain Disney charm, cuteness and magic to it that few of the following films managed to replicate.

The following era would be a crucial one for Disney, since they broke for the formula of the nineties and started to expand their horizons a little bit. For me it was a sight of relief and I found the break of habbit to be a breath of fresh air, yet none of these films felt as Disney as the Renaissance era (with the exception the flawed and heavy-handed "Brother Bear"). Though some of their films were good in their own rights (and yes, even panned efforts as "Atlantis" and "Home on the Range"), they still haven't been as captivating and stirring as the nineties features.

The "non-stop comedy" approach has also affected the live action productions of the properties Disney acquired in recent years, namely Marvel and Star Wars.

*shudder*

Frozen is the only one similar to the Disney movies of that era

I feel Tarzan and Fantasia 2000 are the last of a kind as well. Most of the classic Disney style was heavily influenced by 19th century illustrations. The films themselves were less interested in being clever or "subversive" than telling the story in an emotional (some might argue sentimental), straightforward manner. There were shifts over time, even before the 21st century-- the 1930s and 1940s Disney features tend to be darker than what came later (with some exceptions), the 1990s Renaissance films were influenced by Broadway more than Disney films past, etc.-- however, most Disney films of the 20th century tended to draw upon fairy tales, folk stories, classic literature, and other more traditional tales presented in a more or less traditional style.

After Tarzan, it feels like Disney had an identity crisis, one that's never been fully resolved. As the OP says, a lot of their more recent films tend to lean heavily on comedy and "subversions" of old stories (though these subversions are often now themselves cliches-- Frozen's mocking of love at first sight had already been done to death by the likes of the Shrek movies and even Disney's own Enchanted and Princess and the Frog). Tangled and Moana are as close as you get to traditional presentations of the kind of fairy/folk stories Disney was once known for: that is, they're movies that don't try to upend classic archetypes or mock the tropes common to the more traditional Disney model. They also feature comic relief characters and funny moments without being outright comedies.

This isn't a complaint, mind you (well, except for the subversion thing-- even in 2013/2014, I was annoyed that Frozen got a lot of praise for doing things other, earlier Disney movies did better). Just an observation... and a long-winded way of saying I agree with the OP. Tarzan was the end of an era.