When Will Disneyland’s New Rides Finally Open? Timeline For Closures & Openings

There are a number of new Disneyland rides planned for the coming years. All of the completely new rides are opening in Disney California Adventure Park, but there are also a couple of exciting additions coming to Disneyland Park.

At Mickey Visit, we follow the latest Disneyland news very closely. We recently got more announcements about these big new attractions coming to Disneyland so it is the right time to do a deeper dive into the likely construction and opening timeline of these additions.

READ MORE – 11 Unwritten Rules of the Disney Parks You Really Need to Follow

New Disneyland Rides Opening Dates

Before we dive into the major new rides coming to Disneyland, I also wanted to call out a new attraction that is just about to open this summer as part of the Disneyland 70th Anniversary celebration. We will soon see the first-ever Walt Disney Audio-Animatronics figure debut as part of the Walt Disney – A Magical Life show. This is going to be a fantastic addition to Disneyland, the only park that Walt Disney ever stepped foot in, and will serve as a touching tribute to Walt. I recently visited Walt Disney Imagineering to learn more about this figure and have a commentary and new details on the figure, including thoughts from Imagineers and a look at the controversy some have brought up around it.

This new show will open in the Main Street Opera House on Disneyland's actual 70th birthday, July 17, 2025.

The other “new” ride for next year is the new mission for Millennium Falcon in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in Disneyland that will dramatically improve that ride. There will be a big marketing push around this and perhaps general improvements to Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, too.

This new ride will open on May 22, 2026, aligned to the new Mandalorian movie. We don't yet know how long the construction will take on this. Based on the storyline, it doesn't seem like they are changing the Hondo Ohnaka Audio-Animatronic in the pre-show. For this reason, they may be able to complete some programming work at night when the park is closed. The closure may not have to be very long ahead of this new ride's opening. I don't think there will be any big new installed item that would require closing the ride for long. See link above for ride details.

Now, turning to the bigger investment that we do not have dates for.

Over the past couple of years, Disney leadership has been talking a lot about turbocharging the Disney theme parks to encourage more visitors by opening new rides and attractions. There are efforts ongoing to add the new attractions that I am mentioning here today as well as new rides at Disney World and even new cruise ships for Disney Cruise Line. I mention this because no expansion or addition happens in a vacuum.

At Disneyland, the last couple of years have also been a time of preparation for the coming decades. Disneyland reached an agreement with the City of Anaheim that increased their zoning via a new deal that also guarantees that Disney will spend at least $1.9 billion on new rides and theme park capacity and will invest money into community enhancements like affordable housing. This initiative is called DisneylandForward and it paved the way for the new rides and lands that we are going to be talking about today.

Last year at D23, we got announcements about the new rides and attractions coming to Disneyland. Clues from that presentation and previous investor announcements point to these rides all being completed within five years of the presentation, meaning that the last new attraction should be open by 2029.

There are four new rides coming to the Disneyland Resort in the next few years. I would encourage you to read our guide to new rides at Disneyland, linked at the top of the article for an overview of each of these. These new rides are the two new Avengers rides, the new Avatar Pandora land which at this point seems to only have one ride, and the new Coco ride. All of these new rides are coming to Disney California Adventure Park and not Disneyland Park. During this same period, they are also launching the new parking structure and Disneyland entrance to accommodate more people and to free up space for one of the new additions.

You can see a Disney California Adventure map below and the overall map with the additions put on top of it at the top of this article.

Timeline For New Disneyland Rides Opening

Now, let's jump into timeline mode and start to understand when new attractions could open and when others will close to accommodate them.

Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue will close in early 2026. I am disappointed to be losing this attraction and so soon. The attraction is currently located where the new Avatar Pandora area will go, but we don't anticipate construction starting on that project for a long time. Of all the projects, Avatar is likely the furthest out. In the meantime, this space seems to be destined to become a preparation space for the rest of the work.

There is going to be a lot happening in a tight amount of space around what is currently the transportation hub and eastern entrance from Harbor Boulevard. They are going to be building a new entrance experience from the parking structure while also claiming the bus loops for theme park space that will become Avatar. This will all make sense when it is done, but it will be a huge construction puzzle as they work towards the final version.

Here's a visual looking at the map from an aerial view for a clear look into how I believe this space will likely be used. Note that this is a rough visual that is really based on a guess.

So, the red area will likely become the pathway in from the parking structure that you can see detailed in the concept artwork and map here. Then, the green and black areas will eventually become the Avatar Pandora land. The big question is how this space will be used between today and the finished project.

Based on the fact that the Monsters Inc. ride is going to shut down before anything else, my guess is that they will flatten Monsters Inc. and use it as a construction prep area as they get ready for the additional work. Then, at some point the red area will close for construction and the green area will have to be the temporary bus loop until the new entrance area is linked in via bridge.

The construction for the new parking structure is supposed to begin in fall 2026. At that point, it could take one year or longer to get that structure active. From what I have seen in past construction checks, the parking structures take far less time to build than a complex new attraction. It seems like they can be built in a modular way that allows for pre-work off-site. The new bridge over an active roadway and the changes to the Esplanade will be the most complex aspects to move forward.

READ MORE – Disneyland Dates to Avoid If You Hate Crowds 2025

Only once the new parking structure is online and the bridge is active can they begin Avatar construction. We'll dive deeper into when the new DisneylandForward parking structure gateway will be complete in another article, as I want to also go deeper on where the placement of all those pieces will be.

So, that sets up the construction start dates in 2026. At this point, we don't believe that any new ride will open anytime before fall/winter 2026.

The only new Disneyland ride that could open in 2026 would be the Iron Man Stark Flight Lab ride with the arm mechanism. This is the simpler of the two new Avengers Campus rides coming soon. They could pull a Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, with the simpler of the two new rides opening first and then the more complex one following later. Or, they could decide that they want to open them together to prevent anyone from being underwhelmed and hold this ride until the major ride opens.

If they open the Stark Flight Lab ride on its own, the wait times for it would likely be crazy. It doesn't seem like a high-capacity ride and on its own, would likely be crushed by demand in the opening weeks. However, if it is done that much earlier than the big Avengers ride then they will likely get it open to have the capacity and something new to promote.

Iron Man Stark Flight Lab opening prediction – either fall 2026 or 2027 with bigger Avengers ride

Next, the Avengers: Infinity Defense ride. This is the big-time Marvel ride that we have been promised since Avengers Campus opened. It will take guests on a battle that leads us up to a fight with King Thanos. We have a good sense of the type of ride system that it will utilize and keep learning more and more about the ride. You can details on both new rides coming to Avengers Campus here.

We have also started to see construction and dirt moving for both this new ride and the new Iron Man ride. You can see the latest construction update on the new rides here.

It feels like this attraction would have to open by 2027 if they are finally ready to move forward with this attraction. Based on what we know now, this ride could easily coast into a 2027 opening, but we are still waiting for clearer signs that construction is moving forward with haste and that all components are ready. There is only one thing that could derail this opening in 2027.

Avengers Infinity Defense new ride opening prediction – either 2027 or 2028

The new Coco-themed boat ride is actually the attraction that I am looking forward to most at Disney California Adventure. They have promised to deliver something on the level of Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion with this addition.

We now know that the entrance to this attraction is going to be located between Paradise Park and Pixar Pier. This is where the Pixar Pier parade gate is located today. That gate is going to become the entrance to the new boat ride attraction. You can see the new concept artwork released here that shows this clearly.

Again, we are running into more space constraints. If they had the option to construct this on flat, cleared ground, this project could go much faster. However, they have to deal with the realities of the existing infrastructure, including the fact that this is going to cut into the current parade route.

We have heard already that there is NOT a plan to stop having parades in Disney California Adventure. I assume that the parade gate will be moved slightly and the perimeter road of Disney California Adventure might be bumped out into what is currently the large sidewalk area that runs from Disney's Grand Californian out to Katella. This big winding sidewalk that makes a Mickey Mouse head when seen from the sky may go away in favor of parades in Disney California Adventure. Fine by me, though I do love finding this on Google Maps.

So, if they can move the Coco ride forward quickly, I could see this jump past the Avengers: Infinity Defense attraction. I am of two minds on this.

1 – I am most excited for this Coco ride out of everything new and I think it will be HUGELY popular with the Southern California audiences who connected with the film. With that in mind, it would be awesome if they got this out the door as soon as possible, even if it means moving resources here from Avengers.

2 – On the other hand, would it be better for them to get the Avengers ride open and figured out rather than dragging it out any longer? We have been waiting for this for a LONG time. The Avengers ride is what made me add the “FINALLY” in the title of this article.

The last factor here is considering when the Coco 2 sequel will open in theaters. They'll want to line this attraction up to the opening year / season for that new movie if possible. While no official date has been announced yet, at the time of the announcement of the new movie there was an accidental mention that it was going to open in 2029. This could, of course, shift, but that may influence the opening date for this new ride.

Coco new ride opening prediction – This new ride has the largest range of opening date possibilities. I could see it jumping Avengers and opening in 2027 or opening in mid to late 2028 just ahead of the new movie debuting. This is also the most recently announced project for Disney California Adventure which could signal that it will be the later of those two years.

Finally, turning to the new Avatar Pandora area. We know that this new area is going to be the most complex. The key attraction announced at this point is a stunning new boat ride that is expected to use the ride system from the extremely well-regarded Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Shanghai Disneyland. This boat ride is completely different than the Pandora boat ride at Disney's Animal Kingdom.

I would also not be surprised if we got news about another new attraction being added to the Avatar area at a future D23 announcement. This would be similar to how they surprised us with the Iron Man ride for Avengers Campus. In this case, it could be a smaller ride or maybe a defined experience similar to the Moana Journey of Water walk-through at EPCOT or more of a play area like this beloved attraction closing now at Disney's Animal Kingdom.

The new land will be built in the very compact Hollywood Backlot area that is surrounded by people moving around constantly on all sides. The Disneyland Monorail also runs right through the construction site. I don't anticipate that they will change the route of the monorail and that instead they will conceal it in rockwork in the final product. It would be so cool to see them do some kind of window into the attraction from the monorail.

We anticipate that the monorail will also have to close at some point in this period while they finish construction. I'd love to have them use the monorail in “shuttle mode” as they are doing with the Walt Disney World Railroad during the closure in Magic Kingdom. At Disneyland, you could have one monorail go back and forth between Downtown Disney and Tomorrowland on the more interesting half of the track. That would avoid the construction completely and allow it to keep running even if it meant only one monorail was coming. This is totally hypothetical – I don't even know if this is possible based on Monorail safety standards.

The new land / ride will also utilize a stunning amount of new rockwork, which also adds time to any project. You can see a photo of the model above that I first saw at the D23 Disney Imagineering booth. So, for all of these reasons, this will be the last of these new attractions that will open in Disney California Adventure.

Avatar new ride opening prediction – sometime in 2029, could easily be late 2029, making it just under the wire. There are three new Avatar movies planned. Currently, they are slated for 2025, 2029, and 2031. Having the new land open right between those two movies would make sense.

When will we get announcements of more new rides and attractions? At some point, I anticipate that we'll also get announcements for Disneyland Park that will being to happen at the same time as these new rides are put under construction. I'm still waiting on a Frozen addition to Fantasyland. We shall see.

Which of these new additions are you most excited about? Does this timeline surprise you? Let me know if you disagree with any of my guesses.

READ MORE – This Is The Coolest Moment of the Day at Disney California Adventure You Won’t Want to Miss

Don't Miss the Latest Disney News

Don't miss the latest Disneyland and Disney World news from Mickey Visit. Join the FREE Mickey Visit newsletter that over 100k readers receive every single week. Mickey Visit is here to help you save money and experience more during your Disney and Universal vacation. See the Mickey Visit guide to Disneyland and the Mickey Visit guide to Disney World for tips.