Disney’s Biggest Expansion in Magic Kingdom History is Built Around Iconic Film Celebrating 20 Year Anniversary

It’s been 20 years since Disney and Pixar released Cars, the animated film about a world made up entirely of sentient automobiles instead of humans, on June 9, 2006. In the two decades since, Cars has been a juggernaut franchise for Disney’s synergy machine. The company followed up the first movie with two sequels, two spin-off movies, a TV series, a streaming series, and seemingly endless merchandise. A future Disney Jr. program will even imagine Cars characters as babies. In Disney’s theme parks, Cars was leveraged as a strategic pawn at a turning point for the parks industry at large, a feat Disney is now asking the franchise to perform once more.

By the end of this decade, Pixar’s Cars franchise will be part of the largest expansion in history at the world’s most visited theme park. We’re analyzing how Disney bet the farm on Cars before, and how it hopes to do the same thing again. Mickey Visit brings you the latest Disney news and planning resources, including a permanent closure at Disney Springs and Disney executives’ plans for AI in theme parks.

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Cars Was Disney’s Harry Potter Experiment

Cars will make history at Disney’s most popular theme park in the near future, but to understand the importance of that project, let’s first turn back the clock.

On May 31, 2007, theme parks changed forever. That’s the day when Universal Orlando announced it would build The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a new area of the resort’s Islands of Adventure park. Yes, Universal’s Harry Potter land would have a high-tech ride, inside Hogwarts Castle, but rides were just the beginning of the project’s ambition.

The surrounding area would be a 360-degree, lived-in place, a recreation of recognizable settings from a popular film that guests could physically step into. The word “theming” took on new meaning as attention to minute details extended into Potter’s shops and eateries, all stocked with in-universe menu items like Butterbeer and merchandise like magic wands.

It was a new template of theme park design, and it changed everything. Disney’s first chance to try the approach for itself would be Cars Land.

Disney had been developing a concept called “Carland” as part of a major overhaul of Disney California Adventure at Disneyland Resort. Following the success of Pixar’s Cars at the box office, Imagineers adapted “Carland” into “Cars Land,” now rooted in the world of the familiar movie.

Disney announced Cars Land on October 17, 2007, less than five months after Universal announced The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The timeline is unclear on when Disney changed Carland to Cars Land, and it’s probably unfair to say Disney made that choice solely because of Universal’s Harry Potter announcement. Regardless, I think enough evidence is here to say Disney felt challenged by Universal’s plans to consider how it could implement some of the same principles behind Universal’s new template for theme park attraction design into Cars Land.

Creating themed lands was nothing new for Disney, but dedicating a whole land to a singular popular movie was new territory. Furthermore, building an entire land is more expensive and a riskier bet than just one ride. It’s much more difficult to replace if guests reject it. These would have been legitimate concerns for any Disney IP, but especially given that Cars had only been out for one year when Disney announced Cars Land. Would this franchise have legs?

Cars Land opened on June 15, 2012, proving Disney’s capability to deliver a product on the scale of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Cars Land debuted with a big-budget thrill ride, called Radiator Springs Racers, but the project went beyond Disney’s typical “ride based on a movie” approach by surrounding that ride with the entire town of Radiator Springs from the film.

Guests could eat local cuisine prepared by Radiator Springs’ residents, like Sally the porsche’s Cozy Cone bread creations. They could shop in stores “owned” by characters from the movie, like the curios shop managed by Lizzie, the Model-T Ford.

With Cars Land, Disney set its own version of the Harry Potter pattern that later Disney projects would emulate. Imagineering followed up Cars Land with similarly elaborate realms in other parks based on such franchises as Beauty and the Beast, Avatar, Toy Story, Star Wars, Avengers, Zootopia, and Frozen. What began as an experiment with Cars Land is now the norm, and Cars Land perhaps doesn’t get enough credit for paving the way for what followed. Had Imagineers failed to meet the Harry Potter standard with Cars Land, nearly every Disney theme park globally would look different today.

Just as Imagineers looked to Cars to turn the page in 2007, they’re utilizing the franchise again as part of the biggest expansion in Magic Kingdom history.

Introducing Piston Peak National Park

A huge construction site currently sits in the middle of Walt Disney World‘s Magic Kingdom, the most visited theme park on planet Earth.

The site’s hard to miss. Disney cleared all of the 52-year-old Tom Sawyer Island and the Rivers of America, plus a plot of undeveloped land north of the park, to prepare for the construction project. The plans call for two major new areas. One is Villains Land, themed to classic Disney antagonists. The other is our focus for today: Piston Peak National Park, inspired by Cars.

Importantly, Disney is not building Cars Land again. Piston Peak National Park, which will be annexed into Magic Kingdom’s Frontierland, does not tell a story taking place in Radiator Springs, but rather in its titular locale, inspired by the United States’ majestic national parks. Piston Peak is seen briefly in the Cars spin-off film Planes: Fire and Rescue, but Piston Peak National Park is mostly a setting the Imagineers are creating from scratch rather than recreating a familiar environment from a movie.

The illustration above depicts a fanciful interpretation of Piston Peak National Park. To get your bearings, at the top, you can see Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Below is a more realistic concept rendering of what the finished Piston Peak National Park may look like.

Below is what the area looked like as of May 2026, roughly from the same perspective as the concept art above. There’s a long way to go, but crews have also made huge progress considering Tom Sawyer Island was still intact and operating less than a year ago.

Zooming out shows us the massive size of the collective construction site for Piston Peak National Park and Villains Land.

Piston Peak National Park will contain two new rides. The first will utilize a new ride system that Imagineers are developing just for this attraction.

In other words, it will be a new type of Disney ride rather than a recycled version of a ride from another Disney park. Again, Piston Peak is not Cars Land, and this new ride is not Radiator Springs Racers.

This new ride system will mimic what it feels like to go off-roading.

For research, Imagineers went off-roading themselves in Sedona, Arizona, then created their own dirt track in Florida to test various styles of paths, bumps, and turns before settling on the final design.

Before boarding the off-roading ride, guests will be greeted by an Audio-Animatronics figure depicting a new character, Piston Peak’s park ranger, J. Autobon Woodlore.

This car, which is new just for the ride and doesn’t appear in the Cars movies, is inspired by J. Audubon Woodlore. He’s an obscure character from vintage Disney cartoons who was often annoyed by Humphrey the Bear and, occasionally, Donald Duck.

When it’s time to ride, guests will board their four-person, open-air ride vehicle, each with its own personality.

In keeping with the natural spirit of U.S. national parks, Piston Peak will be populated with newly planted trees, including some preserved from Tom Sawyer Island, along with mountainous terrain built by Imagineers.

This will add some sizable new landmarks to the Magic Kingdom skyline. In the concept artwork above, note Big Thunder Mountain behind the new mountain being created for Piston Peak. This is what guests can expect to see when approaching Frontierland from Liberty Square.

Since this is a Cars ride, the journey is a race between two ride vehicles. Audio-Animatronics of Lightning McQueen and Mater commentate on the event for Racing Sports Network. Maybe we’ll hear their “broadcast” as audio narration throughout the ride? Concept art depicts Luigi and Guido in the stands, cheering us on.

In addition to the thrilling race ride, Piston Peak National Park will also feature a family-friendly ride. Disney has not shared any details or artwork for this second attraction.

No restaurants have been revealed for Piston Peak National Park, though food and beverage of some sort is likely to be part of the project. Modern theme park guests are spending more money on food, and almost every new attraction opens with a dining tie-in, even if it’s a snack window.

Disney hasn’t announced an opening date or even an opening year for Piston Peak National Park. However, Piston Peak will open after Tropical Americas at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and Monstropolis at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We predict this places Piston Peak with a ballpark opening year of 2029 or later. See all of our predictions for when Disney World’s upcoming rides will open.

For as massive a project as Piston Peak National Park is, it’s not the only Cars-themed development the Imagineers are working on for Disney World.

Cars Hotel Wing Refurbishment

In 2012, Imagineers created Radiator Springs of a different kind, as a hotel wing, as part of Disney’s Art of Animation Resort. Cars is one of the four animated movies with its own section of the resort campus, joining The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, and Finding Nemo.

A pool is themed to the Cozy Cone Motel, and guests’ suites are filled with decor recalling the movie. Static figures of most of the film’s main characters are staged for photo-ops along the resort’s pathways.

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Disney’s Art of Animation will undergo a major refurbishment in 2027, including the Cars wing. Mickey Visit saw renderings of updated guest rooms during a Disney media presentation. These concept images are not yet released to the public, but we can talk about what we saw. From what we could tell, the updated rooms will modernize the amenities while retaining the whimsy this resort is known for.

Art of Animation will stay open during the refurbishment.

Kachow! Cars Here, There, and Everywhere

Cars is special to me personally, as Disney hosted the movie’s red carpet world premiere at the speedway in my hometown, Charlotte, North Carolina, instead of in Hollywood. Tickets were available to the public for $10, and my family attended. Seeing the creative team and voice cast proud to share what they made together inspired the trajectory of my career.

Beyond Cars Land and Disney’s Art of Animation Resort, the Cars franchise proved a bountiful well for Imagineers to return to over the years for various theme park attractions.

At Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World, Lightning McQueen performed stunts as part of Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show, and eventually hosted Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy, a small-scale indoor show. Both productions have since closed.

At Disney Adventure World in Disneyland Paris, Imagineers built an outdoor spinning ride called Cars Race Rally and transformed a former tram tour into an attraction called Cars ROAD TRIP.

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