The mystical world of Pandora from the Avatar movies is arriving at Disneyland Resort in California as a new theme park land. The overall project will replace a longstanding ride and change the infrastructure of the Disneyland arrival experience. Now, big announcements are looming about the land’s future.
We expect big news about Disneyland’s Avatar land next week. Today, we’re diving into what Disney may share and how the Avatar project will impact Disneyland at large. Mickey Visit brings you the latest Disney news and planning resources, including three ride closures added to Disneyland’s refurbishment calendar and the new Disney Villains merchandise collection.
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Avatar is Coming to Disneyland
A new theme park land based on James Cameron’s Avatar films is coming to Disney California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort. The new area will be based on the water settings of 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water and 2025’s Avatar: Fire and Ash, the second and third films in the series, respectively.
The project is the furthest out of the current Disneyland expansions underway, and given that we haven’t received an update in a while, some wondered if Disney would still be moving forward with the land or if the project had been scrapped in favor of a different expansion.
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However, during the recent earnings call, Disney shared a graphic portraying all of the current expansions underway across its parks, and the “Avatar Experience” was notably included. See all of the big announcements Disney made that day and why they matter to theme park fans.
Here’s a look at that page from the shareholders presentation where they called the addition an “Avatar Experience”.
We already have a broad idea of what this new experience will include. Pandora will surround guests as a fully immersive themed area with mountains, rockwork, and other huge architectural statements.
The headliner attraction of this Avatar land will be an indoor and outdoor boat ride, during which guests will encounter the varied flora and fauna on Pandora, some of the creatures welcoming and others more threatening.
Based on the concept art, the ride seems to include both peaceful and thrilling moments.
We wouldn’t be surprised if the Avatar ride system repurposes that of Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure at Shanghai Disneyland, which combines a traditional boat ride with huge screens and nontraditional maneuvers.
Disney previously built another Avatar land, Pandora – The World of Avatar, at Disney’s Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida. Disney California Adventure’s Avatar land will be completely different from that. The two areas will share some inherent similarities by nature, but Disney is not copying and pasting Animal Kingdom’s Pandora into Disney California Adventure.
The location of the Avatar land within Disneyland Resort will take up a parcel of land that is currently used for two very different purposes. Part of the space is a section of Hollywood Land at Disney California Adventure, including the Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! family-friendly dark ride. This ride will permanently close in early 2027 as Disney prepares for the Avatar land. A large portion of Hollywood Land will remain intact, including the Hyperion Theatre.
The other current use of the future Avatar land property is Disneyland Resort’s transportation hub, the area where buses and rideshares pick up and drop off guests. To accommodate Avatar, Disneyland is building a new transportation hub as part of a massive new parking deck on a plot of land east of the theme parks that, until very recently, was a cast member parking lot. A new bridge constructed over Harbor Boulevard, pictured above, will connect the new parking structure to the entrances of Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure.
The cast member parking lot where the transportation hub will be built was closed in summer 2026. We captured the above photo during a recent stay at Element Marriott Anaheim Resort Convention Center. For now, the area is fenced off with a few small piles of dirt. Before long, construction will begin in earnest, and this area will look very different as the future Disneyland transportation hub comes into shape. See more photos of what the site looked like during our visit.
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Disney Expected to Share Big Avatar News
D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event is Disney’s official convention, and 2026’s will take place from August 14 to August 16. During a special presentation titled Horizons: Disney Experiences Showcase, Disney will share updates about the future of its theme parks, cruise ships, and hotels globally.
This is a huge moment for Disney. Imagine a cross between an Apple Keynote and Comic-Con, in an arena full of passionate fans. Disney has an ambitious slate of ongoing construction projects that we expect to hear updates about. At Disneyland Resort alone, in addition to the upcoming Avatar land, Avengers Campus is expanding and a new Coco ride is being built.
As described above, there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle of getting Avatar off the ground, and this places the project further into the future than Avengers or Coco. Despite this, Disney has already released more concept art for Avatar than either of those projects.
This leads us to the question of how much Disney will reveal about Avatar at this D23 specifically. With the project’s grand opening likely at least four years away, there will be at least two more D23s between now and then! Will Disney want to reveal everything now, or save some details for later?
Then there’s the matter of what exactly there’s left to announce. For starters, we don’t know the formal name of the project. So far, Disney has most often referred to it as an “Avatar experience” or an “Avatar destination” rather than acknowledging an actual name. We know the headliner attraction will be a boat ride, but we don’t know specifics about its ride system or what kind of story the attraction will tell.
Since the project will be on the scale of a full land, we assume the boat ride will not be the only thing for guests to do.
Could Disney surprise us with an additional attraction not yet announced? Would this Californian Pandora include components its Florida counterpart doesn’t, like a kids’ play area or live entertainment? A unique meet & greet with an Ikran or other mythical Pandoran creature could be incredible. At the very least, we expect a new dining location or two to be part of the plans for Avatar at Disney California Adventure.
We’re anticipating other huge announcements to be revealed at D23. See our D23 predictions for Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Disney Cruise Line.
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