Disneyland Castle Drawbridge Still Functional, Recent Test Confirms

At a Destination D23 panel, we recently got the news that the Sleeping Beauty Castle drawbridge at Disneyland is still functional! This is the only drawbridge at a Disney castle that actually works.

The drawbridge has only been lowered a couple of times in the park's history, but it was recently tested again. This was an interesting, albeit unexpected, announcement during the castle panel at the event. Keep reading for more details!

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Disneyland Castle Drawbridge Functional

During the recent “Beyond the Spires: An Insider Look at Disney Castles” panel at Destination D23, we got confirmation that the Disneyland castle drawbridge is still functional today.  The Disneyland castle drawbridge has officially been lowered twice in the park's history—at the grand opening of the park in 1955, and then during the reopening of New Fantasyland in 1983.

At the Destination D23 panel, they shared, “as we were preparing for this panel, we actually reached out to Disneyland partners and asked them about it, and they were willing to lift up some of the rails and test it and show us today that it still works and functions.”

You can see some of the historical photos that Disney had up while sharing this news during the panel.

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This is definitely a little bit of a surprise to see that they just recently tested it! We wondered if this was to hint at future drawbridge use for some upcoming milestone at the resort, but we don't know of anything of that scale in the immediate future that would warrant this happening. The only two other times this has happened, it has been for a major milestone at Disneyland Park. It's more likely that they just wanted to say during this D23 panel that the drawbridge is still functional, so they made it happen!

In addition to this interesting castle news, there was also some other major news announced at this event. During the same panel, we got news about Cinderella Castle being repainted to its original color scheme. This news got the loudest applause and cheers of the weekend, as many fans were happy about the reversal of this controversial paint job from a few years ago.

Some other big news from Destination D23 included the announcement of a Walt Disney Audio-Animatronics figure coming to a classic attraction, new popcorn buckets revealed, the 2026 D23 Expo dates, and more. See all of the big announcements about theme parks and new movies that Disney made during the event here.

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