A new theme park land based on Monsters, Inc. is coming to Walt Disney World, complete with a highly anticipated roller coaster taking place inside the door factory from the movie! Disney provided an update on the land’s grand opening timeline. This follows additional project details recently revealed about the upcoming land.
Disney will open Monstropolis in phases, not all at once, and this means a big part of the land will open sooner than expected. We have details on which portions of the land will open when, and what to expect from the new attractions. There are especially lots of surprises for Monsters University fans! Mickey Visit brings you the latest Disney news and planning resources, including more changes to a Star Wars ride that was recently updated and Disney World expanding a free airport perk beyond its value resorts.
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Monsters, Inc. Land Opening Sooner Than Expected
Monstropolis is the name of the new Monsters, Inc. land opening at Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Disney World. This area will feature multiple attractions, as well as dining and shopping. We describe each individual component of Monstropolis below.
The land takes place after the movie. Now that monsters know that humans aren’t toxic and that laughter is 10 times more powerful than screams, they’ve invited us into their city on H.U.MA.N. Day to make sure that “humans understand monsters are nice.” We heard more about the backstory of this monster holiday day during a discussion with Imagineers earlier this year.
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Monstropolis partially replaces the area of Disney’s Hollywood Studios formerly known as Muppets Courtyard, and partially expands the theme park’s footprint beyond its former borders. This creates a unique situation in which Disney has decided that Monstropolis will open in two phases.
The first phase of Monstropolis will open in 2027. A specific opening date or season has not been announced, but this is earlier than anticipated, given the scale of the project.
At the end of this story, we’ll break down the reasons why Disney may have chosen not to open the land all at once, but first, let’s go through what’s opening in each phase.
What’s Coming in Monstropolis Phase 1
Monstropolis Phase 1 will include an indoor theater attraction, a table service restaurant, a quick service restaurant, and a shop.
The indoor theater attraction will be called Welcome to Monstropolis. Guests will sit in a large auditorium and watch a screen-based show with a few Audio-Animatronics figures in the room.
Welcome to Monstropolis involves Mike and Sulley hosting us humans for an introduction to the monster world. Sulley wants to keep things simple, but Mike gets carried away.
As seen in the concept art, lots of characters from Monsters University return for this attraction, including Mike and Sulley’s Oozma Kappa fraternity brothers: free-spirited Art, two-headed twins Terri and Terry, and Don, “mature student.”
As is typical for theme park storylines, not everything goes according to plan in the Welcome to Monstropolis show. Splitting hare monsters seem to have run amok in the theater.
One of the hares will appear on a camera inside the theater. We saw a sneak peek sculpture of this figure at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event.
Careening through the air is either Squishy or Squishy’s mom, Sheri. We can’t quite tell. Either way, it looks like a classically chaotic theme park attraction moment. Is that Andy’s room they’re blasting out of?
Sidestage will be a one-monster band accompanying the proceedings with music.
Randy Newman, who composed the soundtrack for Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University, wrote a new song for the attraction. The tune, called “Welcome to Monstropolis,” the same name as the show itself, is the first song that Newman has ever written specifically for a Disney theme park.
Here are some of the lyrics to the new song, which sets up the story for the show and the land at large:
“Do you remember how it used to be?
We were scary and mean. Sorry, folks, it’s true.
Look at us now, and you will see
we’re the sweetest monsters in world history!”
In addition to the Welcome to Monstropolis show, Monstropolis Phase 1 will include dining and shopping.
Harryhausen’s will be a table service restaurant recreating the eatery where Mike and Celia celebrated their anniversary date in the movie.
The dining room will feature an Audio-Animatronics figure of the monster chef seen in the film. Above is a look at the figure in progress at Walt Disney Imagineering, as shared during a special presentation at D23.
Archie’s Scare Pig Pizza will be a quick service restaurant. Archie is the mascot of Fear Tech, a rival school to Monsters University.
The Scareporium will be the land’s featured store, where humans can pick up souvenirs from their visit to the monster world.
All of the above will be part of Monstropolis Phase 1, opening in 2027. Now let’s see what’s coming in Phase 2 later on.
What’s Coming in Monstropolis Phase 2
Monstropolis Phase 2 will focus on the land’s headliner attraction, the suspended roller coaster that takes place inside the door factory.
Guests will visit the Monsters, Inc. headquarters and zip off on a wild chase through the door vault, just like the climactic sequence in the film.
Once riders board the coaster, a mechanism will lift the entire coaster train 40 feet in the air in 4 seconds, before launching the coaster forward.
Here’s a look at the coaster’s load station. You can see the area where riders will get in their seats, and where they’ll be lifted up after boarding.
This will be the first suspended roller coaster in a Disney theme park, meaning the track is above riders’ seats rather than below them. Fans have been dreaming of the day when Imagineers would build a ride based on the Monsters, Inc. doors, and it’s finally happening!
Here’s a look at construction progress as of August 2026. A few track pieces are in place. There’s still a long way to go, but workers have made incredible progress. Just over a year ago, this was a cast member parking lot.
Disney has not shared an opening timeframe for Monstropolis Phase 2, but we can assume it will debut in 2028 or later. Other major Disney World projects under construction include Piston Peak National Park and Villains Land at Magic Kingdom, as well as Tropical Americas at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
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Why is Disney Opening Monstropolis in Phases?
Part of Monstropolis replaces Muppets Courtyard, and part of it expands Disney’s Hollywood Studios. This creates an unusual workflow in which two distinct pieces of this project require very different amounts of work, and therefore can be completed on different schedules.
Monstropolis Phase 1 will include all the replacements of the park’s former Muppets Courtyard attractions: Muppet*Vision 3D (Welcome to Monstropolis), Mama Melrose’s Ristorante Italiano (Harryhausen’s), PizzeRizzo (Archie’s Scare Pig Pizza), and It’s a Wonderful Shop (Scareporium). The attractions replacing Muppets Courtyard will retain their predecessors’ infrastructure. Disney isn’t tearing down those venues, but rather transforming them. This gives those entities a huge head start compared to the roller coaster and its building, which Disney is constructing from scratch.
Put simply, the roller coaster will take much longer for Disney to create than the rest of Monstropolis, so they’re opting to open what they can earlier, rather than waiting to open everything at once.
Beyond construction scheduling, the phased opening was likely endorsed by two major departments of Disney: operations and marketing.
From an operations perspective, more areas of Disney’s Hollywood Studios being accessible to guests means a higher capacity, or total number of guests, that the park can admit each day. Higher capacity is a priority for Disney, so there’s little reason for finished attractions to sit empty just for the sake of opening all of Monstropolis at once.
Now that it’s opening in 2027, Monstropolis Phase 1 will debut in the same year as Tropical Americas at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. That new land includes an Encanto ride, pictured above, as well as an Indiana Jones ride and an adorable carousel of Disney animals. As we’ve seen over and over, including with this year’s Cool KIDS’ SUMMER push, Disney marketing loves to promote the openings of multiple attractions in multiple parks at the same time. We wouldn’t be surprised if Monstropolis Phase 1 opens simultaneously with Tropical Americas. It’s also possible that Tropical Americas itself may undergo a phased opening, but that’s just speculation on our part.
There is precedent for this approach. Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disneyland Park opened in 2019 at first with only Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run. The land’s larger attraction, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, opened a few months later. Disneyland implemented the strategy again when the majority of Mickey’s Toontown reopened from its overhaul in 2023, a few months before its big new ride, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, opened.
Disney’s Hollywood Studios is taking the approach right now with a different project. The Walt Disney Studios courtyard area opened earlier this year with Disney Jr. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Live!, but the area’s main draw, The Magic of Disney Animation, doesn’t open until September 14, 2026.
Disney didn’t always take this approach to big expansion openings. The major transformation of Disney California Adventure, for instance, opened all at once. That massive project was anchored by the openings of Buena Vista Street and Cars Land. Both of those lands and all of their attractions debuted on the same day, June 15, 2012.
If you love Monsters, Inc. and can’t wait for the 2027 opening of Monstropolis Phase 1, I recommend watching Monsters at Work on Disney+. The underrated animated series streamed in 2021 and 2024, with two seasons of creative worldbuilding and funny scripts that expand the story of Monsters, Inc. after the events of the film. Many of the original voice actors returned to their roles, including Billy Crystal as Mike Wazowski and John Goodman as Sulley. Mindy Kaling and Henry Winkler star as new monster characters.
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