Disney World brought us inside the newest room coming to the popular Art of Animation Resort and shared mockups of all the big changes happening to another one of these popular rooms during the renovation of all the rooms here. This news comes after we previously shared plans for the Art of Animation refurbishments coming soon.
We toured the new rooms with Walt Disney Imagineering creatives who are responsible for all of the new room designs coming to Walt Disney World. Mickey Visit brings you the latest Disney news and planning resources, including a recent change after fan complaints and new Food and Wine event menus.
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Inside New Art of Animation Rooms Coming Soon
Disney’s Art of Animation Resort is scheduled to undergo a “hard goods refurbishment” for the hotel rooms which means that all aspects of the individual rooms are being thought through again for potential changes. We got a preview of these specific changes coming.
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Work on Art of Animation is scheduled to begin in mid-June 2027 and last through October 2028. We will immediately start to see new hotel rooms begin to come online in Summer 2027 as they complete work on a rolling basis.
They are beginning the refurbishment with the standard hotel rooms that are themed to The Little Mermaid. Next they will work on The Lion King and Finding Nemo themed family suites. The Cars family suites will receive work last.
We went inside the model room for the completely overhauled version of The Little Mermaid themed rooms and saw concept artwork for each part of the new Lion King rooms. The process for working on hard goods refurbishments like this one revolves around different stages of visualization. First they create specific artwork for the different room elements and they create a test room to see all the elements physically before approving aspects for installation.
Let’s start off with a walk through of a description of all changes coming to Disney’s Lion King rooms. They did not release artwork, but we got to see the new looks and the care that is going into leveling up these rooms.
Overall, the rooms are shifting to lean more into nature and the iconic characters from the movie. A Walt Disney Imagineer designer shared that they are taking inspiration from the warm tones of the Savannah. They are bringing the known Lion characters to each of the three sleeping bed areas and bringing what felt to me like higher-end finishes and furnishings. They appear to be dropping the enamel characters and table tops in favor of more upscale finishes. The artwork felt like a cross between the new Island Tower Disney Vacation Club rooms and the current Art of Animation rooms.
The stylings of the different graphics in the room will lean into the animation stages with different concept artwork inspiration.
Another key change for this family suite room that will also be coming to all the other family suites is the change from the pull out couch to the Murphy bed pull down with the couch in front of it. We far prefer these beds because it means it can feature a proper mattress that isn’t fit into the couch.
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Below are images of the current Lion King rooms followed by descriptions of what is coming to the same space in the new rooms.
The above living room space will receive the new Murphy bed with couch in front of it. The Murphy bed will be decorated by new artwork of Simba being presented on Pride Rock representing the opening scene of the movie. They chose this artwork for this room because this is where the family gathers.
The kitchen area will shift to be against the wall on the left hand area of the photo to free up more space. The current circular foot stools will become a new coffee table with twisted base that to me looked like a twisted Bonsai tree.
There will also be a new leaf chair in this main room. The new couch in front of the Murphy bed will have a green leafy texture.
The table entryway area will bring in a new full length mirror that will be on the wall between the living room and door to the bedroom. This table will get new artwork of Nala and Simba playing as cubs. Again, they are replacing the more generic Lion King-inspired artwork here with the actual characters.
New artwork will come to the headboard here from the scenes of the movie where Simba and Nala are falling in love. The headboard appeared to be taller and to take up more of the wall than the current one. The artwork will be in a more flat drawn art style. There were very interesting circular globe lights shown in the concept artwork that were attached to the wall.
The side tables looked like they would have a more substantial granite top. The surfaces all looked like harder slate that seemed more substantial.
The Little Mermaid New Room Designs
The above is a look at the current Little Mermaid standard room designs at Art of Animation. The rooms currently feature 2 queen beds. They are completing a big overhaul of the current rooms with multiple substantial changes.
We toured the new model room to see the details and changes coming here. First of all, one of the two queens will become a Murphy bed that converts to a table so you have far more optionality for how to manage your space in the room.
The entire room has received more details that bring even more Little Mermaid fun into every aspect of the room. We were not allowed to take any photos of the new rooms, so I captured every small detail from this test room to share the unique key changes with you here.
This was the first time that Walt Disney Imagineering has toured members of the media through the test rooms. The goal of the test rooms is to understand if everything in the rooms looks and works the way that they want.
Imagineers shared with us that in order to test the rooms they bring in suitcases, wagons, and strollers to understand how guests would use the space.
Down the long side of the room is a new colorful headboard and Murphy bed featuring the Under the Sea song artwork. The bed and table are quite colorful and the inside has a wonderful fish mural as well when open. The mural when the bed is open is themed to the fish going to sleep as well.
The bathroom has been completely upgraded with a sliding shower door instead of a shower curtain. This feels far nicer. There is also now cute artwork on the tiles in the shower of bubbles in the animated style.
Some of the fun details include colorful shell chairs, forks as the dresser handles, hooks made to look like fish, and seaweed lights.
The animation style in the room is modeled after the artwork in Disney book publishing and media printing.
There are small details everywhere including in lower places that are meant to be for young kids to find at their eye level. There were little clams hidden on the sides of the bed under the side tables, for instance. There are also quite a few hidden Mickeys here, including on the sliding door into the bathroom.
Disney is also making sure that the latest technology is being used in the room. There are USB-C plugs in the rooms for instance.
We look forward to seeing artwork shared and the first of these rooms to begin to come online next summer. It felt like a new room that is both more immersive and upscale than the current offerings. The design improvements also brought in considerations of how guests use the rooms. These are all positive improvements.
Disney shared that all the different elements are still subject to change with any shifts in the development, but we expect that these are pretty locked in if we are seeing them in the model room.
Mickey Visit toured these rooms as part of a Disney media event where we had the chance to get more details from Walt Disney Imagineering about the new rooms.
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